Here's How 'The Gifted' Crew Managed To Squeeze In That Stan Lee Cameo

If ever there was a film/TV tradition for superhero shows that gets people excited and is just dumb/silly/fun, is it waiting for that moment in a Marvel project when you spot the Stan Lee cameo. And we’ve all come to expect it over the years from everything, be it a TV show or a movie, whether in the MCU, the ‘X-Men’ universe, or even Sony’s old Spiderman films, Stan makes an appearance. What we may not always think about is the effort that goes into those appearances, and not always from Stan himself.

In the case of FOX’s new show, ‘The Gifted,’ it seems they worked exceptionally hard to make a Stan Lee cameo happen for their pilot episode, almost making it seem like if the stars had not aligned, that cameo would not have happened. Here’s the story of how they managed to make the Stan Lee cameo happen, according to showrunner Matt Nix:

“We moved heaven and earth to get him in there. The morning we got him, one of our co-executive producers texted me in the morning and told me Stan Lee was in town for a comic book convention. We went to the convention to get him on the show, and they told us, ‘He flies out at four. If you can shoot him in two hours, then you can have Stan Lee in the show.’ We didn’t have that location. We didn’t have anything. We were just like, ‘Okay, it’s a bar? Do anything you can. We have to get the bar. We have to get the actor out of bed and bring him down here to put the costume on. We have to shoot the scene in 20 minutes!’ We went down there, we shot the scene, Stan Lee was like, ‘Thanks very much!’ Then he rode off to get on a plane. That’s the kind of thing where I think people sometimes underestimate the degree to which we who make the show are just another group of fanboys trying to make something happen by the skin of our teeth.”

That is pretty epic, in my opinion, to grab your actors, Stan Lee, a location, and a crew, and get it all done in 2 hours so the legend can make his flight. That’s just, incredible, and shows a real love of the material, of Stan Lee, and the tradition of putting Stan’s cameo in, which makes me enjoy ‘The Gifted’ and the people working on the show even more.

Check out the cameo in the Twitter post below if you haven’t seen it, and feel free to share your thoughts on ‘The Gifted’ premiere in the comments section below that!