Famke Janssen has a new Netflix show out this week, with her Dutch crime drama Amsterdam Empire getting a global debut back on October 30. But, deep down, Janssen knowns that people are frequently only interested in asking her about one thing, i.e., a project she was last part of fully 11 years ago (and even then, only as a cameo): Fox’s original X-Men movies, where she played psychic powerhouse Jean Grey. In fact, there’s only one group that apparently resists the urge to ask Janssen about her time riding the ol’ Phoenix on the regular: The Walt Disney Corporation, which has apparently never talked to her, even once, about reprising the role, despite its general nostalgia mining of the old X-properties in recent years.
“Never. Never ever,” Janssen said when asked by Entertainment Weekly if she’d ever had conversations about bringing her version of Jean back for the MCU. (This, despite the fact that a large number of her former co-stars on the franchise will be back for next December’s Avengers: Doomsday, including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, James Marsden, Kelsey Grammer, Rebecca Romjin, and Alan Cumming.) (We can’t help but wonder if the absence is because the character’s power level throws a bunch of MCU stuff out of whack—or if it’s something simpler, like the fact that X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which focused so heavily on Sophie Turner’s version of the character, was a disastrous flop for Disney in the immediate aftermath of its big Fox purchase.)
It all sounds pretty academic to Janssen, though, who appears to have gained some level of acceptance about how influential a role (that she herself apparently never cared all that much about) has become. “Every time I do an interview, it’s mentioned,” she notes. “It’s interesting. I didn’t realize that was such a big part. Every interview I do, that will come up, and of everything I say, that is going to be the only thing that’s gonna be printed. I should be flattered, I suppose, that this character has resonated with people. It’s been so long, but it’s nice that people are still talking about her. I’m sure every single time there’s a new movie that they’re doing… it’ll come up again.”
