Filming X-Men: Apocalypse Sounds Like It Was Horrible For Oscar Isaac

Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) looks menacing in a scene from 'X-Men: Apocalypse'

Some actors are willing to go to pretty extreme lengths in order to nail a performance. That was definitely the case for The Card Counter star Oscar Isaac a few years back when he took on the role of the titular villain in X-Men: Apocalypse. The ordeal he went through while in full make-up and costume was apparently so intense that one of his co-stars still remembers how miserable he was while they were filming.

Tye Sheridan is currently co-starring with Oscar Isaac in Paul Schrader’s new crime drama. But of course, The Card Counter was not the first project that Sheridan met the Oscar nominee on. The two first worked together on the 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse, in which he played Cyclops. The actor told Looper that in comparison to their time on the set of the Marvel film, The Card Counter was probably a bit less painful:

I just felt so bad for him [on ‘X-Men’] because we were outside shooting in Montreal in the summer. It can get really muggy and warm. It's a bit like New York. He just had all these prosthetics and this crazy cape thing, and I remember the way he would sit down. He couldn't even sit in a chair. He just had to sit on a stool that was elevated. He just looked uncomfortable all the time. I just remember looking at him sometimes and feeling so sorry for him. So this was a much better experience as far as comfort.

Sheridan isn’t off-base when it comes to his memories of his co-star on the X-Men set. The actor himself admitted that the process of playing Apocalypse was, in his own words, “excruciating.” According to Oscar Isaac, transforming himself into the powerful blue-tinged mutant meant that he spent hours in a “40-pound suit” that was equipped with a cooling mechanism and left him with a limited range of motion. There is really no way that could be an enjoyable experience for anyone, so it’s understandable why he doesn’t have a lot of fond memories.

Despite the hassles associated with his first superhero film role, the actor has still decided to give the genre another go. He recently signed on to play the lead hero in Disney+’s Moon Knight series, officially marking his entry into the MCU. It will probably help that playing Marc Spector won’t require quite as much time in the make-up chair as En Sabah Nur did.

Before he begins his next foray into a Disney franchise, though, Oscar Isaac is keeping busy on multiple fronts. He’s doing promotional duties for two high-profile projects: Dune, which he personally believes is a “masterpiece,” and HBO’s Scenes From a Marriage, which resulted in a viral red carpet moment between himself and longtime friend and co-star Jessica Chastain. The man certainly knows how to keep our attention, regardless of how many pounds of blue latex he's wearing.

Katherine Webb