“I Spent The Entire Year As Detective Pikachu”: Ryan Reynolds On How He Went Full Method
"I was on my to pick up my daughters from school when I heard I got the role," Reynolds explains. "I didn't show up at school because Detective Pikachu, he doesn't know who those two little girls are."
Every day more evidence accumulates that Detective Pikachu is not, in fact, a strange artefact that has slipped through from another dimension where movies are just randomised accumulations of mismatching things, but is instead an actual, honest-to-God film, starring flesh-and-blood human beings and specifically designed to be gazed upon by human eyeballs.
Case in point: to celebrate the forthcoming Detective Pikachu trailer, master of the online PR game and third lead of gay panic comedy Buying The Cow Ryan Reynolds has released a video on his Twitter account that explains the process he undertook to transform into the titular electricity-rat.
“Acting is behaving truthfully under imaginary circumstances” – Sanford Meisner. Point is, there’s a new Detective Pikachu trailer tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/g9dRTOJHL1
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) February 25, 2019
“I lived in it, I breathed in it, I became the character,” Reynolds says to camera, relaxing in the kind of modern, minimalist lounge rooms that exist in Ikea catalogues and literally nowhere else. “I spent the entire year as Detective Pikachu.
“As many of you know, I vanish into my roles,” he continues. “I was on my to pick up my daughters from school when I heard I got the role. I didn’t show up at school because Detective Pikachu, he doesn’t know who those two little girls are. Who are they?
“He doesn’t have a wife. He’s a little yellow guy.”
when you think about it, in the film DETECTIVE PIKACHU, the character of Detective Pikachu has a little hat
— David Sims (@davidlsims) November 12, 2018
According to the segment, Reynolds went full Christian Bale-style method, trying to “lose 182 pounds to match [Pikachu’s weight] until doctors intervened.”
The video also features a cameo from Reynolds’ wife, legendary star of the screen and noted killer of sharks Blake Lively, there to burst Reynolds’ bubble.
“I mean, he didn’t even change his voice,” Lively notes. “It just sounds like him.”
Unless this whole thing is revealed to be an elaborate ruse, designed, in the words of Lankaster Merrin of The Exorcist, to make us reject the possibility that God could love us, then Detective Pikachu will hit Australian cinemas on June 16, 2019. Until then, all we can do is wait.