Jon Hamm never had the chance to play Mr. Sinister, but he got pretty close. The former Mad Men star revealed recently that he was almost cast as the iconic X-Men villain for a post-credits cameo in Josh Boone’s The New Mutants. If it had happened, it would have teased Hamm’s baddie playing a larger role in the future of Fox’s now-cancelled franchise. Unfortunately, this never came to pass, but the actor is still very interested in returning to the role should the character appear in Marvel Studios’ upcoming X-Men reboot.
Speaking with Comic Book, Hamm explained he’s a lifelong fan of Marvel’s merry mutants and continues to be interested in the characters:
That franchise — it’s so weird to talk about it that way — but I was a big fan of just reading the comic books when I was a kid, the X-Men of the ’80s. And it remains. I remain a fan. It’s an interesting, very cool story, for want of a better word.
Jon Hamm
Mr. Sinister, a.k.a. Nathaniel Essex, is an ageless evil scientist from the Victorian era, who is obsessed with cloning and experimenting on mutants in search of perfecting the human race. He was teased in both X-Men: Apocalypse and Logan, and was reportedly set to appear in Channing Tatum’s Gambit before that project met it’s end. Hamm continued to reveal he’d still like to play the character if given the chance:
I think that what they’ve been able to do, and what I think their plans — and I’ve talked to people that plan these kind of things — with how they are expanding these stories, and the wit and the creativity with which they are presenting these stories, really gets back to the old way that comics were presented. Something like the most recent Spider-Man, which was such a cool iteration of that idea of the Multiverse and what’s happening and how three things can exist at the same time, it’s very creative. The way that they lean into that creativity is something that, for sure, I’d be happy to be a part of.
Jon Hamm
Sinister is one of the untapped treasures gained by Marvel Studios when Disney acquired Fox in a 2019 merger. With the mutants on the horizon, it’s likely only a matter of time before Sinister, whose fascination with the Summers’ family has been a big part of the comics, makes his live-action debut.
Source: ComicBook
