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Peacemaker Star Chukwudi Iwuji Talks [SPOILER]'s Fate & Cast Chemistry

Published Wed, 16 Feb 2022 07:37:11 -0600

Chukwudi Iwuji had a blast playing Team ARGUS lead Clemson Murn, who's tasked to bring the misfits together to save the earth from a pending alien invasion. While Murn is definitely far removed from the ruthlessness of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), he's still very much a taskmaster trying to get the team to stay focused for better or for worse. The actor spoke with Variety about his role on the HBO Max megahit Peacemaker and how it was like on set. This is your major spoilers warning for the first season's penultimate episode "Stop Dragon My Heart Around."

Peacemaker Star Chukwudi Iwuji on [SPOILER'S] Fate & Cast Chemistry — Chukwudi Iwuji in Peacemaker. Image courtesy of Katie Yu / HBO Max

After it was revealed ARGUS was actually dealing with an altered Murn possessed by the lone resistor of the butterfly invasion, the leader met his fateful end at the literal hand of the possessed Det. Sophie Song (Annie Chang). The very same butterfly that Chris (John Cena) kept in a jar following the team's factory raid. "We shot the last couple of episodes out of sequence, so I knew I still had some more shooting to come back to," Iwuji said of his death scene. "It wasn't farewell; it was a bit of a punch in the gut. This is where he goes down. It became a surprisingly emotional scene. There was a moment in it, where I said, 'I'm proud to have had you on my team.' When we were doing it, it sort of choked out of me, which is always fun as an actor. You always want to be surprised by yourself and by what happens."

Peacemaker: S01 E01 Review: James Gunn & John Cena's Comedy Triumph — Jennifer Holland, Steve Agee, Chukwudi Iwuji, Danielle Brooks, and John Cena in Peacemaker. Image courtesy of WarnerMedia / HBO

When the team discovers Murn's body, Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) sees the butterfly separated from its host as it reached out to her hand in its final act of life. Iwuji doesn't rule out permanent death as long as the narrative calls for it. "The original Murn was very much Peacemaker when we meet Peacemaker," he said when comparing his and Cena's characters. "The actual Butterfly Murn is a guy who is aware of the capacity for change that even the bad Murn had. That's a big message behind 'Peacemaker.' For all the laughs and giggles and explosions, it is about characters like Peacemaker and Adebayo meeting, and the two extremes of America now, you could sort of say, meeting and finding out they can, through talking to each other and being honest with each other, change and accept the other. It takes two to tango, and then it grows mushrooms out into something bigger. That's the central relationship in 'Peacemaker,' those two. 'Capacity to change,' that should be the subtitle of 'Peacemaker.'"

Peacemaker's Steve Agee Talks John Economos, — John Cena, Steve Agee, Danielle Brooks, and Chukwudi Iwuji in Peacemaker
Courtesy HBO Max

When it comes to the chemistry between scenes, Iwuji credit's his co-star for bringing humor and levity. "I'm one of the first to laugh," he said. "For a while, I kept it together, and I didn't know that John Cena had a mission to make me crack on camera. At some point, I started losing it when we shot one of the scenes in the office, then it was chaos. James [Gunn] gets into it. He lets people riff, and he loves it. He's laughing in the director's box, the cameraman's laughing, the grip is laughing. Steve Agee is making me crack up. Sometimes I worried if we were ever going to get the shot. But that meant when we were ready for the shot, in a weird inverse way, I could take all that energy we generated and let it drop and be serious. It made it more fun to play the seriousness because I knew how much we all wanted to laugh." For more on how Iwuji played Murn up to his secret reveal, how he is still interacting with his Peacemaker castmates, and what little he can offer working with Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, you can go to Variety. The season finale streams on February 17 on HBO Max.