The Gifted Pilot: Stan Lee's Cameo Revealed

The Man shows up in Fox's new X-Men series.

The Gifted Stan Lee
Marvel/Fox

Fox's new Marvel series, The Gifted, debuted last night to pretty solid reviews, and one of the things that got people talking was the cameo appearance of Stan Lee.

The Marvel legend is known for his cameos in the movies, yet on TV his appearances tend to be relegated to photographs in the background. For The Gifted, however, Lee did actually turn up. In the pilot, directed by none other than Bryan Singer, Lee walks out of a bar called Tex's, and briefly pauses in front of it - just enough time to show that the broken neon sign simply reads "X'S".

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It doesn't seem like much, but it actually took a lot of work to make the cameo happen. Speaking to CinemaBlend, the series' creator Matt Nix outlined how it came about thanks to a heavy dose of luck in terms of location:

"We moved heaven and earth to get him in there. The morning we got him, one of our co-executive producers texted me in the morning and told me Stan Lee was in town for a comic book convention. We went to the convention to get him on the show, and they told us, ‘He flies out at four. If you can shoot him in two hours, then you can have Stan Lee in the show.’
"We didn’t have that location. We didn’t have anything. We were just like, ‘Okay, it’s a bar? Do anything you can. We have to get the bar. We have to get the actor out of bed and bring him down here to put the costume on. We have to shoot the scene in 20 minutes!’ We went down there, we shot the scene, Stan Lee was like, ‘Thanks very much!’ Then he rode off to get on a plane. That’s the kind of thing where I think people sometimes underestimate the degree to which we who make the show are just another group of fanboys trying to make something happen by the skin of our teeth.”

It's not exactly one of Lee's greatest cameos, but it's always fun to see him pop-up nonetheless, especially when so much effort goes into making it happen.

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What did you think of The Gifted? Share your thoughts down in the comments.

Contributor
Contributor

NCTJ-qualified journalist. Most definitely not a racing driver. Drink too much tea; eat too much peanut butter; watch too much TV. Sadly only the latter paying off so far. A mix of wise-old man in a young man's body with a child-like wonder about him and a great otherworldly sensibility.