What Wesley Snipes' Deadpool & Wolverine Stunt Double Looks Like

Amongst the many superhero cameos featured in "Deadpool & Wolverine," the appearance of Blade (Wesley Snipes) is maybe one of the most surprising. Although the "Blade" films were cult classics back in the late 1990s, and Mahershala Ali is attached to star in a seemingly infinitely delayed "Blade" remake, Snipes hasn't acted in the role since 2004. And from the way Snipes tells it, no one was more surprised than him to be coming back.

"I did not think it was possible," Snipes said to Entertainment Weekly. "I didn't think we would be able to pull it off. I didn't think that Marvel was into it, Disney was into it ... I thought it didn't make sense to me, but [when] you get a call from Ryan Reynolds out of the blue after 20 years, you go, 'Okay, I got to take this call. Let's see what this is about. He told me the idea ... They said 'yes' and 'it's a go.' 'If you're in, we're in.' Here we are."

But although Snipes was eager to team up with Reynolds, his former "Blade: Trinity" co-star with whom he reportedly had a contentious on-set relationship, he wasn't necessarily able to take on the role of Blade in the same capacity as he had two decades ago. The man is in his 60s, after all. So Cali Nelle was brought in to play Snipes' stunt double, taking on all the action sequences too grueling or dangerous for the actor. Nelle fit right into the production, which makes sense — "Deadpool & Wolverine" was far from his first Marvel rodeo.

The French-born Cali Nelle began training in martial arts as a teenager, specializing in Taekwondo and later parkour and freerunning. He began working as a stunt performer in 2014, when he was hired to work on "Guardians of the Galaxy," beginning his long and fruitful relationship with Marvel. In the years since, he has doubled for some of the most prominent actors working in the industry today, including Samuel L. Jackson in "The Hitman's Bodyguard," Djimon Hounsou in both "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword" and "The King's Man," Corey Hawkins in "The Last Voyage of the Demeter," and Yahya Abdul Mateen II in "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" and "The Matrix Revolutions."

Aside from these doubling roles, he's been featured as a general stunt performer in a surprising number of high-profile productions over the past decade. He's dipped a toe in seemingly every franchise, appearing in "Kingsman: The Secret Service," "Terminator Genysis," "Transformers: The Last Knight," "Solo: A Star Wars Story," "Men in Black: International," "The Batman," and "Fast X."

Although Cali Nelle has developed a reputation as an elite stunt performer over the years (even winning best fight at the Taurus World Stunt Awards for his work in "The King's Man"), that's not all he does on set. In recent years, Nelle has split his time between traditional stunt doubling and dabbling in fight coordination, which is a far more intricate role. Essentially, a fight coordinator designs and oversees all fight sequences in a film or television series, sometimes working with a choreographer depending on the needs of the production (for example, if there's a particularly complicated style of martial arts required). They collaborate with the stunt coordinator, who handles all the action sequences of the film, but they're in charge of using on-screen fights to execute the director's storytelling vision. 

In 2022, Nelle served as the fight coordinator for the Starz historical drama "Becoming Elizabeth," and the following year he was brought on in the same role for both Ridley Scott's epic "Napoleon" and the second season of Marvel's "Loki." While he's still working as a stunt performer — he's slated to appear in both "Mission: Impossible 8" and "Levon's Trade" in 2025 — he also has more upcoming fight coordinator credits to his name, including the high-profile "Gladiator II" coming out in November 2024.