Leslie Uggams says Ryan Reynolds made her ‘feel safe’ as his badass sidekick in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’: ‘He’s funny as hell’
Yes, Ryan Reynolds is uniting screen superpowers with Hugh Jackman in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” the Marvel crossover blockbuster that hits theaters on Friday.
But for the third film in the franchise’s trilogy, the madcap mutant has another partner in foul-mouthed wisecracking: Blind Al, Deadpool’s deadpanning roommate played by “Roots” legend Leslie Uggams — in all her 81-year-old badassness.
Seventy-two years after she made her Apollo Theater debut as 9-year-old “Little Leslie Uggams” in 1952, the Harlem native is having a “movie queen” moment: Hot on the heels of co-starring in the Oscar-winning “American Fiction,” she’s back trading barbs with Reynolds’ Merc with a Mouth.
“I love Ryan,” Uggams told The Post about her MCU roomie. “I love working with him. He’s just wonderful, and we have great chemistry together when we’re on the screen.”
Those screen sparks flew when Uggams was cast as Blind Al (short for Althea) in 2016’s “Deadpool,” the first installment in the series, which set a record for the highest-grossing R-rated movie at the time. And she kept the quips coming in 2018’s “Deadpool 2,” another box-office smash.
“Who knew this was gonna take off like this?” Uggams marveled. “And it’s been so much fun. It’s a wild and crazy character, and I love her.”
Due to the top-secret security surrounding any Marvel movie, the Tony-winning actress — who began her career long before there was such a thing as NDAs — had no idea exactly what universe she was getting herself into at first.
“With a lot of these projects that you can’t talk about, scripts are encrypted and everything, so I had no idea of anything about the Deadpool character until I auditioned for it,” said Uggams. “That’s how secretive it was. So to be a part of it, I didn’t tell anybody. My husband knew, but I couldn’t even tell my children.”
But it was one of Uggams’ two kids with manager husband Grahame Pratt who eventually schooled his mother on the Marvel mania she was about to experience.
“My son [Justice] said, ‘Mom, this is big!’ ” she said. “As a kid, I used to follow the comic books, but there’s a whole generation out there that follows all this, and I didn’t realize at the time how people love this character.”
Now Deadpool, with his powers of regeneration, has exposed Uggams to a whole new generation. “I just absolutely love it,” Uggams said.
Still, though, making the movies remains super secretive. But even if she isn’t privy to all the details of the plot — and, of course, those surprise cameos — Uggams trusts in Reynolds like any loyal sidekick would.
“He’s funny as hell, and he comes up with stuff, so you feel safe that it’s gonna be great,” she said.
Uggams’ late-career renaissance has also included TV roles on “Empire,” where she played Terrence Howard’s bipolar mother, and the current Prime Video series “Fallout,” based on the popular, post-apocalyptic video game.
“I mean, people just love and adore this game — something that I was not aware of either,” she said of “Fallout,” which premiered in April. “And we’ve been renewed.”
But Uggams — who is still “a New Yorker” — will forever be Black royalty from her Emmy-nominated role as Kizzy in the groundbreaking 1977 miniseries “Roots,” adapted from Alex Haley’s book based on his family’s journey from slavery to freedom.
“I read the book . . . and then I heard that they were gonna do a miniseries about it, and I mentioned it to my husband. I said, ‘Oh God, I would love to be a part of that,’ ” she recalled.
“Next thing I know he’d gotten me an audition for the role. It was quite a journey, but I got the part, and that was another situation where there was something special, but we didn’t realize how special it was going to be.”
Indeed, it’s a legacy that runs deep to this day.
“I’ve watched it with my kids,” Uggams said. “And it just keeps going and going and going and going. And I love that.”
