Superman Breakout Edi Gathegi Talks Becoming Mister Terrific

Outside of the movie itself, the most feel-good story to come out of James Gunn’s Superman belongs to Edi Gathegi.

16 years ago, Gathegi was offered the role of Darwin in Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class, and before he ultimately agreed to play the highly adaptable, regenerative mutant, he voiced his concerns about the character’s abrupt death midway through the film. For Gathegi, the shocking moment underscored age-old problematic tropes.

“I called my agents to say, ‘Hey, listen, I have a problem with the fact that this character is the only Black character in the film aside from Zoë Kravitz’s character. I am also the only mutant who meets an untimely demise halfway through the film,’” Gathegi tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Superman‘s July 11 theatrical release. “It was 2009 at the time, and I was like, ‘Killing the Black guy first is so played out. I can’t do this.’”

Producers then eased his concerns at the time by making the promise of greener pastures. In other words, Gathegi was given assurances that he’d return in a future X-Men installment based on his character’s ability to restore himself. 

“They assured us that it was essential for the storytelling in order to motivate the mutants to avenge my [character’s] death. They also fully intended to bring my character back as they do in the comics. [Darwin] can’t die; he regenerates,” Gathegi recalls. ”So we held onto the hope that they would honor their word. When I didn’t come back for X-Men: Apocalypse, I just knew it was done.”

In 2023, Gathegi’s reps asked him to send in a self-tape for the part of Mister Terrific/Michael Holt in Gunn’s then-upcoming Superman movie. But he initially resisted the idea due to a TV role he’d just landed opposite Robert De Niro, as well as an impending European vacation. He felt it would just be another tape that gets lost in the shuffle. However, he then learned that the DC Studios co-CEO and Superman director was especially eager to see him audition. What Gathegi didn’t know was that Gunn had already seen 200 people for the role, and he still hadn’t found the right candidate, prompting him to ask his casting director why Gathegi hadn’t read for the part yet.

Gathegi and Gunn had known each other in passing for years, and the Kenyan-American actor suddenly remembered a compliment that Gunn had paid him on the red carpet of The Suicide Squad in 2021. So he sent off a self-tape the day before he was set to leave the country, and while he was en route to LAX, Gunn DM’d him to praise his tape, which eventually led to his casting as Mister Terrific.

Gathegi’s turn as the suave high-tech superhero and member of the Superman-allied Justice Gang is now being widely regarded as Superman‘s scene-stealing performance. For Gathegi, his second bite of the superhero apple means so much more when considering how he was treated in Fox’s Marvel universe.

“The pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction. With X-Men: First Class, the message that I received as an actor and as a man of color in this world is you can be the most powerful mutant in the world and they’ll never let you reach your full potential,” Gathegi says. “Whereas with Mister Terrific in Superman, the message that I’m receiving is you can be one of the most intelligent characters in the universe, and you can help save the world. It’s a different level of conversation.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Gathegi also discusses some behind-the-scenes details from Superman, as well as an amusing scene with Mister Terrific and David Corenswet’s Superman that became the post-credit scene at the eleventh hour.

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I suppose we should start with your first dalliance in the superhero genre. Did you come out of X-Men: First Class thinking that it would be your one-and-only shot at being in a superhero film?

It’s a bit more complex than that because I thought that I would be returning to that franchise over and over again. I thought that there was potential for a bigger future. It was actually a surprise to never get the call to suit up again.

Was it a last-minute decision that your invulnerable mutant character would make a quick exit? 

No, sometimes, with these big movies, you have to say yes to the movie before you’ve actually read the script. But I was in London after I’d just been offered the role, and they gave me a couple of hours to read the script to determine whether or not I wanted to do it. So I read it, and I called my agents to say, “Hey, listen, I have a problem with the fact that this character is the only Black character in the film aside from Zoë Kravitz’s character. I am also the only mutant who meets an untimely demise halfway through the film.” It was 2009 at the time, and I was like, “Killing the Black guy first is so played out. I can’t do this.” 

So there were conversations that happened, and then they assured us that it was essential for the storytelling in order to motivate the mutants to avenge my [character’s] death. They also fully intended to bring my character back as they do in the comics. [Darwin] can’t die; he regenerates. So we held onto the hope that they would honor their word. 

Nick Hoult, as Hank McCoy/Beast, also happened to be there for the lead-up to Darwin’s demise. Did he reference or make light of that situation at all during the filming of Superman? 

No, because I’ve moved well beyond that. The run of that particular franchise was X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. And when I didn’t come back for X-Men: Apocalypse, I just knew it was done. So I didn’t really look back, to be honest with you. I speak about it when people bring it up, but I made peace with this years ago.

I’m surprised Nick didn’t bring it up as an icebreaker after all these years.

We actually had a great time filming [X-Men: First Class] in London. We were all young, and we got a per diem. We were also living in these gorgeous apartments while working on a big-budget Hollywood production and living a childhood dream. So it was a very, very exciting and positive experience, but just the way that they handled my character was a fumble.

Well, now you’re being regarded as the scene-stealer of Superman. That’s quite the second bite of the apple.

The pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction. With X-Men: First Class, the message that I received as an actor and as a man of color in this world is you can be the most powerful mutant in the world and they’ll never let you reach your full potential. Whereas with Mister Terrific in Superman, the message that I’m receiving is you can be one of the most intelligent characters in the universe, and you can make a difference. You can help save the world. It’s a different level of conversation.

James Gunn has said that Mister Terrific was the toughest role to cast. He saw 200 people, and one day he asked his casting director why you hadn’t read yet. Was that a question you were also asking?

It’s a pretty cool story. I went to The Suicide Squad premiere where I met James in earnest. I wouldn’t say it was the first time because we’d known each other from various places, but I hadn’t seen him in a long time. So he came up to me on the red carpet to tell me what a fan he was of my acting, and I had no clue that he had seen me in anything. I then filed that away and thought, “James Gunn is a big fan of mine. Maybe we’ll have the opportunity to work together one day.” 

Then, when my agents called me to make a tape for Superman, I had just been given a role opposite Robert De Niro in a TV show [Zero Day]. And I was like, “Okay, I’ve just scratched my itch. I don’t need to go out there and try to secure more work.” I was also on my way to Europe for a vacation the following day, so I told my agents that I didn’t really have the time or the bandwidth to audition for [Superman]. People think I’m crazy, but the truth is that I was going away and prioritizing my life.

Then I heard that James Gunn was waiting for my tape, and I thought, “Okay, this tracks because I met him on the [Suicide Squad] red carpet and he likes my work. If he’s actually waiting for my tape, that means this director is actually going to watch my tape.” You don’t always know who watches your tape. Sometimes, as an actor, you make tapes, and it just feels like they’re going out into the void. But this felt like a situation where James was guaranteed to watch it. 

So I made a tape and sent it in before I went on my way to Europe. The next day, I was in my Uber headed to LAX, and I looked at my Instagram to see a direct message from James Gunn. He was like, “Yo, you killed this audition.” And I thought, “Oh, wow. Now I’ve got to spend two months in Europe wondering if I’m actually going to be in the new Superman.”

When I was in Milan, I thought, “If I actually get this job, I’m going to need an outfit for the premiere.” So I bought a suit and a pair of shoes in Milan, and I totally forgot about them until I was doing my fitting. I ended up wearing a different suit, but I remembered that I had those shoes that I bought in Milan before I even booked a job. I’d been sitting on them for two years, and I wore them at the premiere last night.

Did you actually toss and turn the entire time in Europe? 

I’ve arrived at a place in my life where I’ve learned to prioritize life over career, so, for the most part, I was able to put aside thoughts of this movie while abroad. Now, naturally I was aware that I could potentially be on the cusp of a great opportunity, but I was willing to trust the process and be present with my family. My two-month vacation was then cut short because they did ultimately want to screen-test me, so I flew back early to complete that process.

Did you have to drop out of the De Niro show for Superman?

I did ultimately have to leave the De Niro project [Zero Day], but it was only because of the strikes pushing the schedules on top of each other. My decision came down to what had the potential for a longer life, and a new DC character in a rebooted universe felt like the right choice. I was a bit bummed because working with De Niro was definitely a bucket-list thing, and I know and love the director, Lesli Linka Glatter.

Once you started filming Superman, is it true that you ultimately scrapped the choices you made on tape and focused on a different take?

The way that James and his wonderfully creative mind works is he dances in the spirit of play. So you’re trying different things, you’re trying wacky things, and you’re trying wild things. You’re just opening up this character to all the various possibilities. He then goes into the edit to see what works and what doesn’t work. So I found myself doing things that felt very counterintuitive to what I had imagined the character would be. But what I saw on the screen was something closer to what I auditioned with, to be honest with you. It was closer to the version that secured me the job in the first place.

Superman is obviously a very important movie to Warner Bros. and DC Studios. Was the pressure palpable on set?

There obviously is pressure. You’re in a genre that has a lot of fans and a lot of eyeballs. You’re aware that there’s a lot of money being invested in this particular production. There’s pressure that you put on yourself to be a good actor and be in service of the story, the text and the director. So you do the work, and you remember the fact that you were chosen and that you’re there for a reason. So the best-case scenario is you show up to work confident and you’re released of all those other external pressures. You’re able to then focus on the work and try to elevate your scene partner, and be present to make interesting choices. So, yes, there’s an element of pressure, but the goal is to subdue that.

Superman and the Justice Gang have an alliance, but they have differing philosophies. Superman literally won’t hurt a squirrel, but your character is willing to kill if necessary. What did you make of that distinction? 

I think that’s a film-specific choice. I’ll have to go back and look at the comics, but I don’t believe that Mister Terrific kills in the comics. He clearly kills the kaiju in this, and while he might kill in the comics, I would say that Mister Terrific and Superman are more alike than they are different. Superman stands for idealism; he’s got a code of ethics. And Mister Terrific’s motto is “fair play.” His entire personality is the ethical use of AI, and he disbelieves in abuse of power. He thinks the more power you have, the more empathetic you should become. It shouldn’t be the reverse. And Superman is the antidote to “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

How surreal was it to look to your left or right and see the Man of Steel fighting alongside you? 

Everyone has said it a million times, but people are now getting the chance to watch this movie and experience the perfection that is the casting of David Corenswet as Superman. He embodies him physically, but also in demeanor and so many other ways. It’s pretty inspiring. And when I looked at myself in the mirror, I felt like I was looking back at a person who could save the world. So standing next to Superman, there are no words to describe the magic of that.

You got your own action showcase during Terrific’s field trip with Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan). What was the highlight of putting that sequence together?

The highlight lies solely and simply in the fact that it was done. It was one of the most arduous things that I’ve had to do as an actor. I was wearing a leather outfit in the middle of the hottest heat wave on record for that region. We were under the hot sun on a beach with infirm ground, and I was doing this fight choreography over and over again. Some of the moves that we practiced weren’t reading on camera, so we had to improvise new adjustments to the choreography on top of everything else that was going on at the time. 

There was a moment where I actually wanted to pull James to the side and say, “Let’s scrap the new stuff and stick to the old stuff. I cannot do it.” So I had to take myself away from the set and breathe and give myself a pep talk. And that pep talk went a little like this: “You’re in Superman, dude. This is what you wanted. Get back in there and just hit this choreography.” So that’s what I did, and the next take worked. I then thanked God for that little miracle.

Did you actually get to shoot on the Cleveland Guardians’ field? 

Yeah, those were some pretty hot days too. We were right there. There were a lot of real-world sets that we had access to, and those were the days that shifted my experience because everything up until then was in Atlanta on soundstages. So we didn’t really have any prying eyeballs, and we got to work in our own little bubble. But when we got to the cities, it’s harder to lock down locations. So that’s when the pressure started to kick in, and I became a little bit more aware of the magnitude of what I’m involved in.

You trained with Maria Gabriela De Faria (The Engineer) for six months before the movie started filming, so were you both looking forward to your confrontation on the Guardians’ field the entire time?

Yeah, there was a bit of that. We would chit-chat. Gabby is the most bubbly and sweet person. She’s become a dear friend, and I love that girl. She totally inspired me because of how hard she was willing to work, and so she was a great counterpoint at the gym. We all knew that it was going to lead up to the Engineer having the ability to kill Mister Terrific when he’s vulnerable, and his life is spared through distraction by Superman.

DC and Marvel have always pursued relatively similar storylines, and the Black Panther movies have explored the debate over making Wakandan tech available to the masses. Is that also a story point that Terrific has had to address?

Yes, he does believe in sharing his technology with the world, and as I touched on, he’s overly concerned with the ethical use of AI. He’s the kind of brain and the kind of soul and heart that would program a philosophical bug in a killer AI so that the killer AI would start to doubt its own mission to destroy everybody. He believes in the ethical use of AI to that extent.

Terrific is also in the very funny post-credit scene. When you shot that scene, did you know it’d be the post-credit scene?

I did not. It was [originally] part of the movie. I found out that it was going to be in the end credits before the premiere yesterday. James sent me a little message, saying, “Hey, I know you haven’t seen the movie yet, but just to give you a little heads-up so you’re not surprised, there’s been some changes. That scene is now the post-credit scene.” So when we were at the premiere, everybody in my row was getting up, and I did not let them get up. They were like, “What’s going on?” And I was like, “There’s a post-credit scene.” And then there were whispers, asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure?” I even started to doubt it myself. I thought, “Maybe there isn’t, and I made all these people wait here for no reason.” But then it happened.

Was there anything else of interest that didn’t make the cut?

Yeah, there were some third-act interactions with Krypto that I had a blast filming, and I was looking forward to watching how it all came together. But in watching the movie, I totally understand why it was cut. As a filmmaker, that’s what I would’ve done. So it was done in service of the story, and what we want is the best story to engage the audience in the most complete way.

How much do you know about the future of your character in the DCU? (Note: Following this interview, WSJ reported that Gunn is considering a Mister Terrific TV spinoff.)

With regards to me and maybe a lot of other characters, we’re just waiting to see what the success of this film will be. But in terms of solid information or direction, it’s anybody’s guess. There’s talk of some things, but as James constantly reminds us, they’re never going to rush a project into production that isn’t ready, script-wise. So whatever they announce is kind of irrelevant until the writer delivers a shootable draft.

Decades from now, when you reflect on this experience, what day will you likely recall first? 

This is probably one of the reasons why I got Superman, but for a couple months leading up to it, I had started to live in a radically present place. Yesterday’s premiere marked the two-year anniversary of James, [producer] Peter Safran and [EP] Chantal [Nong Vo] sitting me down and asking me if I wanted to play Mister Terrific. It was two years to the day: July 7th, 2023. So I have been completely present in this entire experience the last two years, and I’m going to remember so many days because so many days are significant to me. 

Now that it’s over, I’m clearly looking forward to the future. I would love to do more Superman movies and other movies and explore Mister Terrific in different iterations throughout the new DCU. But I will be radically present in whatever my next job is, even if it’s outside the DCU.

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Superman is now playing in movie theaters.