Deadpool & Wolverine villain shares connection to scariest Quentin Tarantino character

Deadpool & Wolverine’s main villain just got a whole lot scarier, as the inspiration behind their characterization has been revealed.

Though audiences know about Deadpool 3’s cameos and Easter eggs, not much is known about the villain Cassandra Nova, other than her being Professor X’s evil twin sister and the main source conflict in the upcoming Marvel movie.

But now viewers know where Nova’s evil tendencies come from. Her actor Emma Corrin explained that they used Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as the key source of inspiration for Nova’s personality.

“Because he’s in that uniform, that says everything you need to know,” Corrin explained to Harper’s Bazaar. “He can sit down at the table and just chat like we’re doing now, be animated, very pleasant. It’s so unnerving because he’s as evil as they get, the worst person on the planet…  he is the opposite of a scary villain; he lets his physicality do the talking, and then he flips the other parts on their head.”

Landa is widely regarded as one of the most terrifying movie villains of all time, thanks to the combination of his ties to the Nazi regime and Waltz’s unnerving yet captivating performance in the role.

And it seems that using such a monster of a character for inspiration worked to Corrin’s advantage as their co-stars Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds couldn’t stop praising their performance as Nova.

“Emma has an ability to so subtly change — to turn on a dime,” Jackman told Harper’s Bazaar. “There was an effortlessness, a sense of danger.”

Reynolds echoed the sentiment in the same interview, saying, “It felt like working with a skin-covered Swiss Army knife. Emma brought a Gene Wilder energy to Deadpool & Wolverine. Mischief, danger, unpredictability — from their first scene onward, we understand the villain enough to know why she’s motivated to oppose our heroes.

“And that’s because Emma is so f**king excellent at humanizing even the most chaotic lines. The only thing we love more than hating a villain is loving one. And we love Emma’s Cassandra Nova from the jump.”

Deadpool & Wolverine will slash into theaters July 26. While waiting, you can read all about Deadpool 3’s film rating, how the movie will achieve a major box office feat, and why fans are so convinced Taylor Swift will cameo in Deadpool 3.