Ioan Gruffudd recalls filming ‘Fantastic Four’ in early 2000s

Years before Marvel hired Pedro Pascal to shapeshift, flatten, and stretch, Ioan Gruffudd starred in the 2005 original Fantastic Four and 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as Reed Richards.

Ahead of the 2025 box office hit Fantastic Four: First Steps, the previous films were critical washouts, and each could only gross just over $300 million worldwide.

In an interview with Vulture, published on July 30, Gruffudd looked back at filming the limb-stretching scenes in the original Fantastic Four franchise.

“We had terrific sets built,” the actor recalled, handling the filming of such sequences, “and that’s always a thrill for me as an actor when you have a tangible set behind you, like their home and office at the top of the Baxter Building, that was an enormous two-tiered set.”

Gruffudd explained that the “Fantasticar” was built in reality, with wind machines, and the cast was in the car on a gimbal.

Furthermore, speaking about the stretching scenes and aligning them with the visual effects, the actor said, “I had to use my imagination for the stretching. I choreographed very, very specifically with certain camera movements.”

“I was often standing with my arm behind my back because it was easier for them to digitally build the arm from the suit than it was to erase my hand. So there were some comical moments where you were thinking to yourself, ‘This is the strangest thing ever, like, I didn’t imagine studying this at drama school,’” Gruffudd asserted.

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