Earlier this year, Andre Tricoteux tweeted that he was done with his colossal duties on Deadpool, which was soon followed up with a tweet from co-star Gina Carano about him being “the best Colossus a person could ask for.” Couple that with statements Tricoteux gave to the media after the fact and all signs pointed to him portraying the metal-skinned mutant. However, word comes today of the true identity of the actor breathing life into the character.

Entertainment Weekly officially confirmed rumblings that Serbian actor Stefan Kapicic is “an eleventh-hour replacement” for Tricoteux. The longtime comic book fan, who voices Colossus and partly performs through motion capture, revealed to the magazine that he wasn’t sure what he was auditioning for initially, but after the second round of casting he put it all together.

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Image via EW

He said of the role:

[Director] Tim Miller’s idea of Colossus was to be bigger and stronger than everyone else, so for the motion capture they needed an extremely tall man. I’m 6-foot-4, but he wanted Colossus to be over 7 feet, so they used a stunt double to recreate his height, and he did very good job there. Tim also wanted Colossus to sound as close as possible to the comic book character’s background, so he had me to come in, since my voice was what he envisioned for Colossus, who has an authentic Russian accent. My character’s voice gives him the past history as Piotr Rasputin once you hear him speak. This made him the most authentic to the original idea of the comic book character.

In speaking to the process of crafting Rasputin’s voice, Kapicic said:

We had been trying all sorts of depths, both vocal and emotional, while playing with variations of Russian accents to give a range to the role until we finally got what Tim wanted. Giving the voice and expressions to a character is giving it a soul. It is a specific type of acting and it must be precise as it has to bring a character to life. Colossus’ voice is not much different than mine as Tim loved my natural color and range of voice, so we kept it and worked more on the Russian accent. The best note I received was to be authentic.

The news of Kapicic, who only finished his work on Deadpool in mid-December, is accompanied by two new images of Colossus from the film. Check them out below:

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Image via Fox
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Image via Fox

If you think this is cool, you’ll want to check in with the NBA on Christmas Day at noon on ESPN. Ryan Reynolds, suited up as “the merc with the mouth,” and his co-star T.J. Miller as Weasel feature in a video message that teases “a sneak peek at Deadpool.”

Take a listen to Kapicic's Colossus in this first TV spot:

Deadpool debuts in theaters on February 12th.

For more on Deadpool, be sure to check out some of our recent coverage below:

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