A good guy and a bad guy walk onto a movie set. Both walk away feeling wronged. Disappointed. Underwhelmed. Audiences felt pretty much the same when a hopelessly messy version of Justice League hit theaters almost four years ago.
Both Ray Fisher, playing hero Cyborg, and Joe Manganiello, playing villain Deathstroke, saw their futures as iconic DC Comics characters vaporized in the aftermath of behind-the-scenes battles, catastrophic reviews, abandoned sequels, and enduring disagreement. Then, four years later, they got a do-over.
That’s where the actors found themselves last fall when Vanity Fair interviewed them on the set of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which was in the midst of shooting a new sequence for an unprecedented second try at Hollywood’s most notorious superhero face-plant. The “Shocking, Exhilarating, Heartbreaking True Story of the #SnyderCut” has already been told in detail.
The Q&A below is the story of Cyborg and Deathstroke.
Fisher thought that playing the reconstructed robotic hero in the original 2017 film would be a career breakthrough. But after Zack Snyder left the project amid a family tragedy and irreconcilable disagreements with Warner Bros., Avengers filmmaker Joss Whedon took over. That’s when the project became a source of personal upheaval for the actor, as Fisher’s negative experiences with Whedon exploded into tensions with the studio that continue today.
When Snyder was still in control of the original film, Manganiello shot a post-credit cameo as the assassin Deathstroke, intended as a prologue to a much more substantial role in Ben Affleck’s planned stand-alone film about the Caped Crusader. When that version of The Batman movie fell apart in preproduction, Manganiello’s footage was re-edited by Whedon to tease a Justice League sequel—which also never happened.
After Snyder agreed to return to the project last year to finalize his original vision as a four-hour event on HBO Max, both Fisher and Manganiello signed on to shoot the project’s one major new sequence. They’ll also see the their earlier performances restored to something closer to Snyder’s original intent. Fans will finally get to see it all in its entirety on March 18.
Both actors sat down during a break on the Simi Valley set last October to discuss how Justice League went awry, and what they hope this version sets right.
Vanity Fair: What’s it like to come back? It’s got to be a little strange.
Joe Manganiello: Four years…I mean, jeez, I don’t even know how to put it in words. We all thought it was over. But the fact that the fans were that…
Ray Fisher: [Pulling up a chair.] Hey, what’s up, man?
Manganiello: How are you? I want to hug it out, but…
Fisher: Hey, it is what it is—2020. Back in the saddle! Mohawk looks good!
Manganiello: [Runs hand through it.] Thanks!
Fisher: I was gonna say, that’s not you, though? That’s not your personal mohawk?
Manganiello: That’s my hair!
Fisher: No, it’s not. [Laughs.] That’s fucking dope.
Manganiello: Yeah, I shaved it over the weekend. He just asked what’s it like being back. It’s like, there were just so many things that I had thought about, [other projects] I had worked on. I didn’t just shoot the final scene for Justice League, the end-credit sequence. I was preparing for a movie. I was preparing for [Affleck’s] Batman. So, all the work, the sword training, the guns, you start thinking, Okay, well, I have to hurry up and shoot this scene to tease that movie. But then next year I’m going to come back and fully flesh this character out. I had all of these thoughts. And this is the culmination of four years of staring at the ceiling at night. What could I do? So, it’s fun to come back and start playing a little bit of that out. And of course, it’s great to see Zack and all the people I haven’t seen since London, all those years ago.
How is it for you, Ray? I know it’s complicated, because you’re in a situation with Warner Bros.
Fisher: There’s a lot going on right now, but I’m able to compartmentalize those things. I wouldn’t have missed this opportunity for the world, to be here with Zack and the crew. There’s no way in hell I would have missed a single day. I would have walked here if I had to, you know what I mean?
Manganiello: Yeah…
Fisher: Like Joe was just saying, this thing has been on my mind. There’s not a day that’s gone by over the last three years I haven’t thought about this movie, that I have not sat up at night thinking, What if there was a world wherein this thing actually does get released?
At what point did you know, Okay, maybe there will be a Snyder Cut? When was it real?
Fisher: I don’t think it was real until just this year. Really real. It’s always been talk. There was a comic convention where people would ask me about it, and I decided to stop being so studio PC about the situation, and just go, “It does exist. It’s not a matter of whether or not it exists. It’s a matter of whether or not we actually see it.”
I think the fans really just kept the fire going. And it felt real, because Zack had all this information and all these photos that he would share with us. But insofar as it getting released in the way that it is—man, I wouldn’t have thought anything like this was going to happen for at least another 10 years. You know what I mean?
Manganiello: For me, like I said, I was preparing for a movie that didn’t happen. So then the end-credit sequence was shifted to advertise a Justice League II movie, about the villains, that then was pushed to the side.
Did the studio consider adding your Deathstroke to any other projects?
Manganiello: There was incarnation after incarnation of Suicide II, involving me versus [Will Smith’s character] Deadshot. So I went through a couple of years of that. And when the last one didn’t go, then you just put it away. And you just say, “It’s over. That was it. I went through five flaming hoops, and it’s not happening. We’re putting it down.” And then Zack calls you up and says, “Okay, let’s go.”
You’d given up on Deathstroke, until being brought back for this new sequence in the Snyder Cut?
Manganiello: The second I let it go was when Zack called me and said, “Hey, I think if these things line up, then you’re going to get to play him again.” So you go back, you dust off that trunk, you open it and you go, “What would I have done, had I been given the chance to do more?”
But Ray, you didn’t let it go.
Fisher: No, not for a single day. No.
Manganiello: I had to for my own sanity. I was like, “I’m out. I can’t do this.”
Fisher: I probably should have let it go. But there was so much that we left behind in this version of the film. It’s a completely different movie.
Can you walk me through the emotion you felt throughout this process? When you heard Zack had left the original movie, what was that like? What were you feeling, what were you thinking?
Manganiello: [To Fisher] That’s probably more of a question for you, because I shot one scene with Zack. For me, it was the shock that Batman wasn’t happening. So then, what happens to that scene we shot? I thought that scene was then going to be thrown away.
You were fully signed on for the Affleck Batman movie?
Manganiello: Correct. I was the villain in that. And [after Affleck dropped out in early 2017] I thought, well, that [Justice League] scene’s gone. It’s not going to exist. Then, I remember getting a call from [Warner Bros. copresident of production] Jon Berg at the time, who said, “Hey, we got Jesse [Eisenberg back as Lex Luthor] and we reshot all of his dialogue. We’re teasing a Justice League II. So, we’re still going to use it and it’s back in the movie.” And I went, “What?”
So it was all same stuff you shot originally for Zack, just reconfigured?
Manganiello: They used my side; they changed his side. So, when Zack called me [about the Snyder Cut], he said, “Hey man, this might happen.” And I said, “Oh, well you have all that footage. So you’re going to restore the scene back to what it was going to be to tease the Batman movie, not Justice League II?” Then Zack called me a few months later and said, “By the way, we’re bringing your suit over from London and we’re going to do [an entirely new scene].” I got super excited for that, but I didn’t really go through the roller coaster that [Fisher] went through with Zack, as far as that went.
Fisher: Yeah, it was tough.
How did you find out that Snyder was leaving the movie in 2017?
Fisher: I remember I was in a movie theater, coincidentally enough, in New York. I remember exactly where I was. I was walking into the AMC right in Times Square. And I got the call from Zack and he was saying that he had to deal with stuff with the fam and he was having to step away. I had a trillion questions. My heart sank. I was like, I can’t ask really any of them at this point, because I know he’s got a lot of other phone calls to make like this, and I could hear it in his voice. It broke his heart to make those [calls].
He told you about his daughter taking her own life?
Fisher: I’d heard about that months before, but insofar as him having to step away to deal with the family stuff.
Did he indicate at the time that there was disagreement about the cut with the studio?
Fisher: No, I didn’t hear anything like that from Zack. He’s always been a stellar dude when it comes to that kind of stuff. After he had stepped away, I hadn’t talked to him one-on-one for maybe about a year or so. This was well after the movie came out; we had done the reshoots. I wanted to really give him his space because I knew as things were changing and evolving, this is not what was meant to be. And so, I already knew he was dealing with a bunch of other stuff and I was like, let me not put [the disagreements with Whedon] on top of him too.
One of the big things for me was just trying to maintain, even in the reshoot process, the integrity of what we had come up with together, which was tough a lot of times. But I think the bones of Cyborg are still in what the theatrical cut is. And it’s because of the work that we were able to put in prior to [Whedon taking over]. I was able to hold onto that against some pretty precarious situations on set.
But didn’t a lot of stuff change?
Fisher: There was a lot of stuff that changed, to be completely honest with you. I had to go back and reshoot every single scene I was in. None of this stuff that you see in the theatrical cut with me, except for the Gotham City police rooftop scene with J.K. Simmons, [is original]. Everything else I had to reshoot.
Manganiello: Whoa.
Fisher: Yeah. There was so much that was lost, man. It’s crazy because if it weren’t happening in this way, we may not be able to see everything that Zack had originally planned. This [new] thing is four hours long.
When did you hear that Joss was going to do his version and significantly change things? He’s not just finishing Zack’s work, but he’s now going to do his own approach…
Fisher: Let me tell you, they wouldn’t let me read the script until I agreed to meet with Joss. I was supposed to go to L.A., and this is how I knew things were getting bad. They flew me out to L.A. This was around the time of the Wonder Woman premiere [in 2017]. I was going out there to meet with Joss and they were supposed to deliver the script to my hotel room. They didn’t deliver the script.
And are you contractually obligated to do the reshoots? Could you have said yes or no?
Fisher: Well, no. You get a certain amount of reshoot days built into the contract, so that they can fit whatever they want to fit within those days. We ended up in a situation where they said, “Well, Joss doesn’t want you to read the script until after you meet with him.” And I said, “Well, the only reason I’m here is to read the script and then talk to them so we can talk about the [changes].” And then I come to find out that everything was changed.
Could you object to the changes?
Fisher: You’ve signed on to do the movie, but there are certain things that you have to push back on. There were a lot of really precarious things that they wanted to try that I found would have been slightly offensive to people that were differently abled. [Note: Cyborg gets his powers from being reconstructed after a serious car crash.] Some of those things, I was able to get out of the script. But it was an uphill battle for a lot of us during that time, and that’s no secret at this point.
Was the hope that you would talk first and then you guys would hit it off?
Fisher: It was to warm me up with a conversation…. It was just a really strange setup. I kept talking to people and they’re like, “Well, just so you know, this isn’t normal stuff.” Because this was my first feature film, period. This is my first big anything. And so I’m just trying to go with the flow.
So, those things really tripped me out. I was like, “Something’s odd, but I can’t piece it all together.” Now that I’ve got hindsight and I’ve got a lot more nuanced information about the entirety of it all, that’s what I’m essentially trying to get dealt with on the other side of things.
Now, Joe, you didn’t have to work on the Joss version…
Manganiello: No, I was back and forth to London fitting the suit. As soon as we got the suit right, we went off to Monaco Bay, they got a yacht and Jesse. I just shot the scene with Zack.
I don’t know how much you can talk about this, Ray, but you’ve been very public that there was a dispute. What happened?
Fisher: Well, there was a lot of toxic behavior from Joss Whedon. I don’t think it’s any secret or maybe it’s an open secret in Hollywood, but luckily I have not been in the business for a really long time, and I haven’t really subscribed to that way of behavior. Going from a person like Zack to a person like Joss was like day and night.
What’s the difference between those two?
Fisher: What ended up happening, I think, was a bit of a collaborative gaslighting that we got from Joss. We ended up getting an email prior to the reshoot, I think it was sent out to the entire cast. It was an email saying, “Hey, we’re really trying to pull this together. Obviously this is a tough situation. Any questions, comments, blah, blah, blah, feel free to pass them along.” We learned pretty quickly that that was not the case at all. That was just the niceties for what was really going to be happening, which is, well, I’m not going to get too much into that. The thing is, there’s an ongoing investigation with respect to that, and we’re trying to get everything back on track with that. [Note: That investigation has been concluded, but Fisher has stated he is not satisfied and believes the dispute cost him a future role as Cyborg.]
People are wondering, what exactly happened?
Fisher: There were some things that did not happen to me that I bore witness to, that I can’t speak about right now. That’s for the people that it happened to, to speak about. You could tell very quickly that [Whedon] was very upset that people did not like Age of Ultron very much. This is what I gathered from the first conversation that I had with him. There was a bit of this sort of egotistical narcissism that ended up going into everything that he was trying to do.
You can see it in some of the scenes that were produced. Flash falling on Wonder Woman’s [chest] is something that he yanked out of Age of Ultron and just copy-pasted here. In my first conversation creatively with him, he kept accidentally calling “Diana” “Natasha,” which is crazy stuff. [Note: For the unfamiliar, the real name of Marvel’s Black Widow is Natasha, and DC’s Wonder Woman is Diana.] This was in the conversation that they made me have with him prior to giving me the script. There was a lot of belittling on set. There was a lot of mocking, both of previous work and of actors and people.
What do you mean? [Note: Throughout V.F.’s reporting on this project, Whedon’s representatives have repeatedly declined to comment.]
Fisher: He compared me at one point to Robert Downey Jr. And said, “Listen, I don’t like to take notes from anybody, not even Robert Downey Jr.” And I said, “Well, okay. Be that as it may…”
Manganiello: You had a suggestion?
Fisher: That was the first phone conversation he and I had had about the actual script. And so, two notes in, he cuts me off flat out and goes, boom. This is what it is. And I go, “Okay, the email that you sent was not what I’m getting right now. So I’ll take the cue and just back off it.” But you can tell he had a lot of resentment for what the situation was with the Marvel side of things. It just felt weird and odd. But we ended up getting the brunt of a lot of whatever he was going through at the time. I don’t know what that was, but whatever it is, can’t continue…. This kind of stuff can’t keep going. I mean, I said it before: If this is the only film I’m blessed to do, I’ll take it and go, because there’s never going to be another film that happens like this.
Tell me about Zack. What kind of guy is he to work with?
Manganiello: Just a ball of energy. Super passionate and super hyped up. And I love what’s in his brain. I mean, Zack is one of the great shooters of all time. Take 300, for an example. You read that on paper and what it winds up in the end, what he had in his brain, what he foresaw doing with that script, is revolutionary. It changed everything. Every movie after that had to copycat the action…. So, you know that when Zack calls, I get excited because I know it’s going to look amazing. So, that’s number one. I just want to be able to trust that my director is going to make me look good. I do my job. And then he makes me look amazing.
What do you think, Ray? How would you describe Zack?
Fisher: Just look at the way he shoots. Look at the people [who] he casts. Look at how inclusive he is on that side. Working with that man, it doesn’t feel like going to work…. Like Joe said, he brings that ball of energy. The man just doesn’t stop. But he’s so excited about it, he just gets you hyped, and you want to do a great job because—
Manganiello: He shares.
Fisher: Absolutely. And if you’ve got an idea, you want to try it. He’s never like, “Yeah, no. Let’s not even try it.” He’ll give you one and be like, “Yeah, go ahead. Just do whatever you want.” And I’ve been in situations where that has not been the case. He’ll look at the idea with an open heart and an open mind. And if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But he’s very much a sharer.
Coming back to shoot this new sequence for the Snyder Cut, do you have a sense that this is a chance to fix an experience that went wrong?
Manganiello: We’ll see.
Fisher: [Rapping his fists on a wooden table] I’m knocking on it for you, brother.
Manganiello: I’m back. I’m happy to be back. Like I said, it’s fun dusting something off what you let go of a long time ago. When does that happen again?… I have more white hair now. I fit the character, which is actually better for me.
Fisher: I definitely got more gray hairs! I had the barber put a little color on them, just to make sure we’re good. But yeah, it does feel like a sort of relief or release, just having this [movie] come to light. I was talking to Zack and the crew earlier. I was like, “Four years ago, almost to the day, we were wrapping this in London.”
Manganiello: How funny is that?
Fisher: Yeah, just insane. It feels kind of like kismet. It feels right. It does feel like justice in a way. Took four years to get us here. But listen, we’re here.
Editor’s Note: This Q&A has been edited for context and clarity and shortened.
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