The Behind the Scenes Problems with Blade: Trinity

The third Blade movie, Blade: Trinity, is one with no shortage of problems. But given the apparent problems behind the scenes, perhaps that’s no surprise.

In a quite brilliant interview with The A.V. Club, Patton Oswalt revealed that all wasn’t well on the set of Blade: Trinity, and Wesley Snipes doesn’t come out of it well at all.

“He wouldn’t come out of his trailer and he would smoke weed all day,” Oswalt told The A.V. Club. “Then I remember one day on the set – they let everyone pick their own clothes – there was one black actor who was also kind of a club kid. And he wore this shirt with the word ‘Garbage’ on it in big stylish letters. It was his shirt. And Wesley came down to the set, which he only did for close-ups. Everything else was done by his stand-in. I only did one scene with him. But he comes on and goes, ‘There’s only one other black guy in the movie, and you make him wear a shirt that says ‘Garbage?’ You racist motherfucker!’ And he tried to strangle the director, David Goyer.”

Oswalt recalls that Snipes would stay in character throughout the whole shoot for the film, and when Oswalt introduced himself, Snipes simply said “I’m Blade.” Furthermore, “a lot of the lines that Ryan Reynolds has were just a result of Wesley not being there.”

further reading: Complete Schedule of Upcoming Marvel Movies

It all came to a head when Wesley Snipes apparently sat down with David Goyer and said, according to Oswalt, “I think you need to quit. You’re detrimental to this movie.” And apparently, Goyer’s response was “Why don’t you quit? We’ve got all your close-ups and we could shoot the rest with your stand-in.”

“And that freaked Wesley out so much that, for the rest of the production, he would only communicate with the director through Post-it notes. And he would sign each Post-it note ‘From Blade’.”

Obviously, we haven’t heard Snipes’ side of the story, but the final cut of the third Blade film tells a tale of its own.

This article originally ran on Den of Geek UK in 2012.