Walker Scobell’s Ryan Reynolds Impression in ‘The Adam Project’ Is Spot-On

If you’ve ever wondered what Ryan Reynolds sounded like as a little kid, look no further than The Adam Project on Netflix. Because this new sci-fi adventure movie—which began streaming today, and stars Reynolds as a pilot from the future who time travels to the year 2022 to meet his younger self—cast the absolute perfect child actor to play the smaller, but equally cheeky, version of Reynolds’ well-established screen persona.

The child actor’s name is Walker Scobell, and he stars in The Adam Project, as “Young Adam,” a 12-year-old kid with a smart mouth that gets him into fights at school. From the moment we meet him—futilely attempting to outrun his bullies—he’s spewing clever, mile-a-minute insults, such as “Did you order a bully starter kit on Amazon?” and “Chuck, we talked about this—shut up, Chuck!”

Scobell’s cadence has just the right amount of Reynolds’ signature playful mockery. And, given the fact that he’s also taking a beating while he’s making his cute little quips, it’s all too easy to imagine this precocious child is a young Wade Wilson in a special kid edition of Deadpool. And, because Reynolds has essentially assumed the Deadpool persona in his public life, it’s almost like giving audiences our own time machine to see into Ryan Reynold’s past.

Credit should be given to director Shawn Levy (best known as an EP on Stranger Things) for this spot-on casting, as well as to The Adam Project writers—Jonathan Tropper, T.S. Nowlin, Jennifer Flackett, and Mark Levin—for the spot-on, ableit PG-version, of Deadpool–esque dialogue. But the main reason Scobell pulls off such a good Reynolds impression is that he’s been practicing for years—long before The Adam Project was ever cast. As it turns out, Scobell is a Deadpool fan. And by “fan,” I mean he learned the entirety of Deadpool 2 by heart by the time he was 11 and was so nervous to meet Reynolds he could barely talk when the two first met. That kind of fan.

In an interview for The Adam Project press notes, Reynolds affectionately called his young co-star “a little punk,” going on to say, “He watched Deadpool 2 600,000 times. He knows every word to both movies. So, Walker just came in and didn’t need to do anything. All we needed to do was slap a couple of colored contact lenses in his eyes and off we went. His head is screwed on so right that we’d just throw out any line we felt like, and he would nail it and deliver it with perfection.”

Lest you think that Scobell’s Deadpool superfan status is just PR talk, Reynolds actually posted a video on his YouTube page of Scobell—while on set with Reynolds for The Adam Project—reciting an extremely R-rated monologue (as describing the action sequences) from Deadpool 2. You can tell by Reynolds face that he’s both concerned for and proud of his veritable mini-me.

Given his obvious admiration of Reynolds, it’s no surprise that Scobell took his job emulating the Deadpool actor seriously. According to Jennifer Garner, who plays Adam’s mother, Scobell would FaceTime with Reynolds when he felt stuck on a line.

“There were times when he would say ‘I don’t know exactly how this would roll off of Ryan’s tongue,’” Garner said in that same interview for the film’s press notes. “So Shawn and Walker would FaceTime Ryan — who’d literally have kids crawling all over him — and he would say ‘What is it buddy?’ And they would go back and forth until they found a read that felt real to both of them, and Ryan would send a voice note over for Walker to listen to. It was just so incredible to watch that relationship become so integral to the rest of the performance.”

What more do you need, Marvel? Write a flashback sequence and cast this kid in Deadpool 3, stat!

Watch The Adam Project on Netflix