Veteran actor Sir Ben Kingsley has expressed his astonishment at reprising the role of Trevor Slattery for a fourth time, a character he “never would have dreamt” would span 15 years of his career.
The acclaimed actor is set to star as the fictional character in the upcoming TV mini-series Wonder Man, an eight-part Disney+ production forming part of phase six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The series is scheduled to launch later this week, seeing Sir Ben return to the role he has played multiple times before.
The new comedy features American actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, whose character, Simon Williams, takes the lead in a Wonder Man film remake. He prepares for stardom alongside Slattery, who is portrayed as another jobbing actor.
Sir Ben, an Oscar winner for his 1982 performance in Gandhi, told Radio Times: “Trevor is an aspiring actor who never quite hit the spotlight. After falling among thieves and posing as a murderous terrorist, he is imprisoned, then broken out of prison, and so returns to Los Angeles to try to recreate himself as a serious actor. This is my fourth visit to Trevor. He is a character that I would never have dreamt would span 15 years of my career.”
Kinglsley first played Slattery in 2013’s Iron Man 3, where he was a decoy villain, known as The Mandarin, for Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian as they attempted to defeat Tony Stark. The actor would return as Slattery for the 2014 short film All Hail the King and then in 2021 for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Speaking about his role in Shang-Chi, Kingsley said at the film’s 2021 premiere: “When you hear Destin [Daniel Cretton, the film’s director], you know that the motives behind telling this story are pure, crystal clear, lucid, pure motives.They are life enhancing and they’re not patronising because they do introduce in a beautiful way, memory, ancestry, loss, and families torn apart and reunited and reconfigured.”
He added: “Thanks to the welcome that Kevin [Feige] and Destin and my beautiful colleagues gave me, as soon as I arrived on set, the fact that my colleagues were from a different culture was immaterial. Completely immaterial and irrelevant.”
When asked which of his many awards or accolades he would keep if he could only choose one, Sir Ben revealed his most cherished honour. He told the magazine: “My knighthood. I revered greatly the late Queen Elizabeth, her father’s nerve and the family’s nerve during the Second World War.”
