To portray his Marvel supervillain Magneto in the upcoming film Avengers: Doomsday, Sir Ian McKellan sought help from the nation’s top office.
When McKellan, 86, was tasked with pretending to demolish the state of New Jersey on the set of the upcoming film, he had difficulty summoning the required anger.
“I’m putting on a fierce look, and I’m trying to be magnetic. And the director over the loudspeaker says, ‘Ian, look more furious,’” the Oscar nominee recalled on Wednesday night’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
The director then told McKellan to shout the “worst thing” he “could possibly think of.” At this point, the actor stood up, extending his arms forward to feign superpowers.
In his deep, bellowing voice, McKellon yelled, “Mar-A-Lago!”
The British actor sat back down and asked Colbert, “Will I be allowed back in the country?”
“Will you be allowed back in the country? No guarantees,” Colbert, 61, replied. “I don’t think I’m the right person to ask for that.”
The actor would be ill-advised to seek immigration help from Colbert, who has himself been at odds with President Trump for his political satire.
Later in the interview, McKellan reiterated Oscar Wilde’s notion that life imitates art. In the wake of the recent killings of two Minneapolis residents, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by immigration officers, the actor asked if he could recite a monologue William Shakespeare wrote on immigration.
McKellan, known equally for his numerous theatrical performances as his iconic film roles in The Lord of the Rings and X-Men, brought Colbert’s attention to a lesser-known Shakespeare play, Sir Thomas More. McKellan performed the first-ever professional production of the play in 1964, on the writer’s 400th birthday.
Though Shakespeare did not write the entirety of the play, he penned a three-page monologue about London’s 1517 anti-immigrant riots—known as Evil May Day. The play was never performed in Shakespeare’s lifetime, as it was believed to have the potential to incite further rioting.
McKellan noted that the monologue argues against the anti-immigrant rioting with “an appeal to their humanity.”
In the three-minute monologue, McKellan walked to the front of the set, speaking at times to the studio audience and at others directly to the camera.
McKellan, embodying the play’s titular sheriff, asked rioters to imagine if they themselves were immigrants. The actor continued, asking the imaginary rioters if they would like to be met with violence, “detested knives,” and kicked out on the street like stray dogs—instead of being met with kindness.
“This is the strangers’ case; / And this is your mountainish inhumanity,” the actor concluded.
McKellen has performed the monologue twice before in popular media, once on Marc Maron’s podcast in 2015 and once at the Oxford Union in 2017.
In Minneapolis, immigration has been at the forefront of national news. The two killings by immigration officers inspired widespread protests and numerous acts of aggression between officers and civilians. On Wednesday, Trump, 79, said ICE officers could use a “softer touch” in the field.
