If you’ve seen and read Frank Herbert’s Dune, you’ll find that the MCU’s Taskmaster is eerily similar to one of its characters. O-T Fagbenle, who plays S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and former flame of Natasha Romanoff Rick Mason, gave an audition for Taskmaster for Black Widow (2021) first. However, that role eventually went to Olga Kurylenko. While she made a mark in that movie, her second appearance in Thunderbolts was her final in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That too was short-lived.
Recently, Fagbenle appeared in one interview with The Direct, where he discussed his audition for the character. He said:
Basically, I first auditioned for Taskmaster, and it was this, it was a really incredible speech, actually. It was an audition I was very proud of. I’ve still got it in the back someplace. And, he was this — I made him with an African accent, and he was this kind of maniacal-like character.
About that Dune similarity? Liet Kynes was actually a man, unlike in the film. The same is the case with Taskmaster’s comic book counterpart, who goes by the name Anthony “Tony” Masters.
It Wouldn’t Have Been a Black Widow Story Either Then
Taskmaster had an entirely different story where the character isn’t really associated with the Red Room but S.H.I.E.L.D. Which also explains the reason for O-T Fagbenle’s portrayal of Rick Mason, who is an agent of the team in comics. For this, he told The Direct that,
They just came to me and was like, ‘Hey, there is this character called Mason, do you want to play Mason?’… So I was like, ‘Hell yeah,’
Eric Pearson, who wrote Black Widow, had this in mind and he wanted characters who could actually fit this story. Following the film’s release, the writer had a chat with ComicBook.com. For what he was looking, according to Eric,
Tony Masters didn’t seem to really fit into that.
Now that the multiverse is in full swing, maybe Tony Masters has a chance in the MCU now.
Taskmaster Almost Had an Entirely Different Fate in Thunderbolts
It was a shocking moment when U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) were in a feud in that incinerator disguised as a secret facility, and Ghost just one-shotted Taskmaster. The end. That was what director Jake Schreier had in mind.
However, Eric, who also co-wrote the film, had an exactly opposite vision for these characters in Thunderbolts. He told The Hollywood Reporter about this. He said:
In my drafts, Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster lived out the movie, and she had a bit of a subplot with Ava/Ghost. They’d both been raised in labs, and Ava big-sistered her into how to break free and be her own person.
It’s sad to think about it, by the way. Ghost was supposed to teach Taskmaster how to deal with the ghosts of the past, and now Taskmaster herself is the ghost of Ghost’s past.
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Marcus Griggs is a Writer at Thumb Wars, zeroed in on video games, but will also throw himself into anything in association with anime and cinema. As with his favorite video games, give him anything with a linear story, be it Call of Duty or Braid, and he will be happy. He thinks of stories as food and wants to feed his readers something nutritious, food for thought.
