Director Shawn Levy Reveals The Taika Waititi Scene That Was Too Hilarious To Keep In Free Guy - Exclusive

"Free Guy" is many things: a video game movie, an action flick, a romance, a buddy movie, and — since it stars Ryan Reynolds – a comedy. Yes, the story centers around Reynolds' character Guy dealing with the existential realization that he's not an actual person in the traditional sense. Additionally, he's beset by the threat of his entire reality and everyone in it being deleted from existence.

He also fights a dude in a rabbit suit and then eats bubblegum ice cream — because "Free Guy" is funny. And it's not just Ryan Reynolds who makes the movie comedic. Everyone in the cast brings their own something to the table — Joe Keery, for example, brings comedy through awkwardness, while Jodie Comer brings the deadpan. 

And then there's Taika Waititi as the film's villain Antwan. If there's anyone out there as funny as Ryan Reynolds, it's Taika Waititi. Waititi was so funny on set, it turns out, that directory Shawn Levy had to cut out a bunch of the improvisational stuff Waititi came up with while filming. In an exclusive interview with Looper, Levy told us about one scene that was only cut from the final film at the very end of editing.

In "Free Guy," Ryan Reynolds and Taika Waititi's characters never actually interact. "I know, it does feel tragic, and maybe if enough people go see 'Free Guy,' perhaps Antwan and Guy will interact in a sequel, either as nemeses in-game or allies in-game," Shawn Levy told us. "That has always been a very tempting lane to pursue."

Antwan does, however, interact with his underlings, Keys (Joe Keery) and Mouser (Utkarsh Ambudkar), and most of those interactions are comedic gold. Antwan spends most of the film belittling and mocking his employees in the most amusing ways possible. It turns out, a lot of that stuff was improvised by Waititi. We asked Levy if there was anything that almost made it to the final cut but didn't.

"Yes, and it was in my cut for quite a while until I realized, man, I can't indulge all his genius, I can't ... The story can't support treading water this long," Levy said. "But there was this whole riff that he did where Joe Keery is sitting at his desk, and his little cubicle has four-foot glass dividers. But the divider ends here, and so Joe Keery was trying to say something to Taika, and Taika's like [miming that he can't be heard] and Joe's like, 'What are you talking about? There's no glass, the glass ends.' Taika started doing literally a whole mime show. Then he created a little window in the non-existent glass and he's like, 'What?' He'd close it, and he would do basically an incredibly skilled mime act, which I will always treasure. It was Marcel Marceau-level mime skill."

"Free Guy" is in theaters now.