‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ reveals X-23 first look: Dafne Keen talks return (exclusive)

Old Man Logan’s feral lil’ ass-kicking surrogate daughter is officially back! Only she’s not quite so lil’ anymore.

One week out from Deadpool & Wolverine hitting theaters, Disney and Marvel dropped a new teaser for the highly anticipated R-rated film that confirms another one of the surprise cameos: Laura, a.k.a. X-23, as played by The Acolyte‘s Dafne Keen.

Entertainment Weekly speaks with Keen, 19, who returns to the role for the first time since portraying Laura in 2017’s Logan at the age of 11. “I had a great time keeping it secret. I had to do a bunch of press for a job that I just finished,” Keen says, referring to her role as the Jedi Jecki on The Acolyte. “I got asked in every interview, and I just got to lie, which was really funny.”

She credits Andrew Garfield, who had to do something similar to hide his surprise re-appearance as Spider-Man in Spider-Man: No Way Home. “All the inspo comes from Andrew Garfield,” Keen says. “He is the master at this.”

Deadpool & Wolverine reunites Ryan Reynolds‘ Wade Wilson and Hugh Jackman‘s Logan for the first time on screen since 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It also marks their formal introduction — and the introduction of the mutants of Marvel comics — to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. When Wade is plucked out of his universe by the Time Variance Authority, the multiverse watchdogs introduced in Loki, he sets out on a mission across multiple alternate dimensions that brings him together with a version of Jackman’s Wolverine from a parallel reality.

Multiple other characters from past X-Men movies are making their way into Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe with Deadpool & Wolverine. Many have been rumored for weeks; others have been strongly hinted, like Lady Deathstrike from X2 and Azazel from X-Men: First Class; one has even been reported by the Hollywood trades. Only Aaron Stanford’s Pyro, Tyler Mane’s Sabretooth, and now Toad and Keen’s Laura are officially confirmed.

Shortly after making Logan, initially meant to be Jackman’s final bow as Wolverine after eight previous appearances across the X-Men franchise, Keen was hoping to return as the silent but oh-so-deadly kid clone of Logan. “It was very much a reality that then kind of fell through,” she says. “There were talks of a script being made. I’d heard it was an X-23 [movie]. I dunno how much of what I’m saying is true because I was 11, but this is what I’d heard through the grapevine.”

Then Disney purchased 20th Century Fox, the Hollywood studio home of the X-Men movies at the time, and those hopes were snuffed out. “I was quite sad,” she recalls of that moment. “I was like, ‘Oh well, I guess that’s it. That’s life, and I’ll have to move on’ — even though this is one of the greatest characters I’ll ever get to play, and annoyingly, I got to play her at 11! I peaked at 11.”

Not so! Keen went on to star in coveted genre roles like Lyra Belacqua in HBO’s His Dark Materials and Jecki in The Acolyte when she landed Deadpool & Wolverine. Her agent had been negotiating for a month straight in secret when Keen got the call while relaxing after a 12-hour day of filming and stunt training. “I immediately screamed,” Keen continues. “I dropped my phone in the bath. I had to put it in rice; it was a whole thing.”

Keen admits there were nerves in returning to a role she played eight years earlier as a child. “I was a bit freaked out,” she says of getting to set. “I was like, ‘I will have forgotten how to play her. She’s not in me anymore.'” Keen rewatched Logan in preparation, trying to remember what she was doing as a young performer. “We went straight into this pretty intense scene. I know I was freaking out,” she adds. “As soon as they said, ‘Rolling!’ I really felt like we were back doing Logan. It was like eight years hadn’t passed.”

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In Logan, Wolverine became a surrogate father to Laura and eventually gave his life protecting his clone, as well as the other young mutant children hunted by a secret organization. In Deadpool & Wolverine, Laura is now older and wiser — and speaking! “Laura has now been around a lot of English-speaking people, so she has a neutral accent every so often. She spats a little bit in Spanish, obviously,” Keen notes, alluding to her upbringing in Madrid. “I had to include that.”

More importantly, the biggest difference between kid Laura and teenage Laura is the character’s understanding of where Wolverine was in his life during the events of Logan. “It was wonderful to get to come back to that and explore that as a grownup,” she explains, “now understanding more parental rage so much more and bringing that to the table for her. I found that Laura in Logan stumbled into having a dad and then having lost her dad. We find her again really knowing how to appreciate — and with this kind of wiseness to her — how much her father means to her.”

But, of course, Laura is still Laura. She’s still a physical and feral character. “That’s how I found her again,” Keen says. “There wasn’t a lot of looking [for her]. She was just kind of in me. The first thing I did for Deadpool was stunt training before I shot anything. I put on the costume and was like, ‘Oh! She’s back.'”

Deadpool & Wolverine opens in theaters July 26.