Sebastian Stan Thought He Was Done as Bucky After ‘The First Avenger’
Sebastian Stan, who has played Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the past decade, revealed that he thought his very first appearance in Captain America: The First Avenger would be his last. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Stan recalled a major last-minute change in the shoot that made him doubt his future in other Marvel projects.
“I certainly did not know that I would be playing the role for 10 years,” Stan told Vanity Fair. “I remember going in for the Steve Rogers role and not getting it. And then being told about this role and where it could go. But it didn’t seem like there was any commitment, really.” Remember, this was 2011, when Marvel hadn’t quite established its dominance as the most powerful force at the box office yet. A sequel wasn’t guaranteed, and Stan was starting to think that his performance as Bucky was a one-off.
The character of Bucky Barnes was originally supposed to lose his arm after falling off a train, and to pull this off, Stan would be given a green sleeve for CGI purposes. To Stan, Bucky losing his arm indicated that he could potentially be coming back — since it would directly tie into the character’s transformation into the Winter Soldier, who has one robotic arm.
“Then, on the day we were shooting that scene, they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re not going to be doing that green sleeve.’ And I just thought, ‘Oh. That’s it. I’m just going to die on that train. There’s no coming back,’” Stan explained. “But they just didn’t know what arm they were going to use or something, and it kept going from there.”
Despite the change, Bucky returned in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and soon became an MCU mainstay, with Stan most recently starring opposite Anthony Mackie in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+.