Kurt Russell Makes ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Confession

Kurt Russell hadn’t seen Guardians of the Galaxy when he was first linked with the franchise.

The 66-year-old actor plays the role of Ego in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, but Kurt has admitted he hadn’t watched the original film when his name was mentioned in relation to the sequel.

He recalled: “I was doing publicity for ‘Hateful Eight’, and suddenly one day my phone started going off a little bit, people around me were buzzing and asking ‘Hey, are you going to do this? Are you going to play Peter Quill’s father?’ and I just didn’t know what they were talking about. I didn’t have any relationship with it at that point. I just told them ‘Hey, I don’t know anything about this.’

“I hadn’t been approached. Then the next day I was, and I said okay, I need to see the movie and read the script, like with anything. So I got a tape and watched it, and that was my first taste of the movie.”

But Kurt subsequently realized it “made sense” for him to be cast as the father of Peter Quill, who’s played by Chris Pratt in the movies.

The Hollywood star told Den of Geek: “I understood within 10 minutes why they were looking at me as Quill’s dad, it went back to a lot of movies I’d done. It was a good idea, it made sense. Very rarely do I bring the right baggage as an actor, but for this one I did.

“I was immediately filled with the feeling of ‘Okay, I wanna do this…’ but also ‘I don’t wanna be responsible for anything that’s not great.’ I want to be a part of something that’s as good or better than the first, so let’s make sure we do that.”