Ray Winstone Recalls “Soul-Destroying” Experience While Filming for Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’

Ray Winstone is looking back at his time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and recalls a not-so-great experience during production for Black Widow.

While recently speaking with Radio Times magazine, the actor, who played villain Dreykov in the Scarlett Johansson-led 2021 action-packed spy thriller, admitted that filming the Marvel movie “was fine until you have to do the reshoots.”

“Then you find out that a few producers have come down, and your performance is too much, it’s too strong… That’s the way Marvel works,” Winstone said. “It can be soul-destroying because you feel like you’re doing great work.”

The Departed actor said he concluded that he wanted to give up on the project altogether, but realized he couldn’t.

“I actually said, ‘You ought to recast it because that was it for me.’ And you end up doing it again because you’re contracted to do it,” he explained. “Otherwise you end up in court. It’s like being kicked in the balls.”

Earlier this week, Winstone also admitted during an interview with The Guardian that he sometimes takes on projects that he doesn’t necessarily feel passionate about, but because he needs the money.

“You go have fun for six weeks, see how it turns out,” the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull actor said of the filming process. “If it turns out great, it’s a plus. If it don’t, it don’t. But you’ve had a great six weeks.

He added, “You do do films you don’t want to do. But you’ve got to do them because you haven’t worked in a little while and you’ve got to pay the rent.”

Winstone is set to star in three upcoming projects, including Netflix’s Damsel, A Bit of Light and Guy Ritchie’s series, The Gentlemen.