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SYFY WIRE Oscar Isaac

Oscar Isaac says X-Men: Apocalypse was an uncomfortable experience that hampered his enjoyment of making it

By Josh Weiss
X Men Apocalypse Trailer Still

While Oscar Isaac played an all-powerful mutant in X-Men: Apocalypse, En Sabah Nur, he didn't have the ability to cool himself off while on set. During a recent interview with GQ, the Star Wars actor revealed that the heavy makeup and prosthetics needed to turn him into Apocalypse really hampered his enjoyment of making the Marvel film from director Bryan Singer.

Apocalypse, that was excruciating," he said. "I didn’t know when I said 'yes' that that was what was going to be happening. That I was going to be encased in glue, and latex and in a 40-pound suit; that I had to wear a cooling mechanism at all times. I couldn’t really move my head, ever."

Sadly, the all-star cast, which included James McAvoy (Charles Xavier), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), and Michael Fassbender (Magneto), became meaningless because Isaac could barely see or move in his costume.

"I was like, ‘oh, I get to work with these great actors that I like so much,’ but I couldn’t even see them because I couldn’t move my head," he continued. "And I had to sit on a specially-designed saddle, because that’s the only thing I could really sit on, and I would be rolled into a cooling tent in between takes. I just wouldn’t ever talk to everybody, I couldn’t really move, sweating inside the mask and the helmet. I was also in high heels inside of a boot, so that was also very difficult to move at all."

The vocal performance of Apocalypse that you see onscreen was not even how Isaac delivered it on set, due to the fact that all of his "accoutrements" were so freakin' noisy. And when it came time to remove all of his makeup, it was like removing old, stubborn tiling from a bathroom floor.

"Every time I moved, it was just like rubbers and plastic squeaking, so everything I said had to be dubbed later as well. And then getting it off was the worst part, because they just had to kind of scrape it off for hours and hours. So, that was X-Men: Apocalypse," he finished.

The movie opened in the spring of 2016, but despite decent box-office success, critics were not entirely wooed by the feature, criticizing (among other things) the blandless of Isaac's villain. Probably not the best thing to hear after you spend hours and hours in the makeup chair every day.