There’s something surreal about walking onto a movie set and seeing not actors Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot, but rather larger-than-life superheroes Batman and Wonder Woman standing there.
That’s what happened with to Ray Fisher, who plays Cyborg in the new DC Extended Universe film “Justice League,” out Friday.
“It’s kind of like Christmas every day for eight months,” he says. “It’s like your birthday every day for eight months — it’s like those things combined. And you have to pinch yourself and say, ‘I’m making a movie. … I’m in a movie with Batman, who I grew up loving and idolizing as a kid.’ … I feel like somebody is going to pinch me one day and say, ‘OK, Ray. Wake up. That was just a long dream.’ ”
amNewYork spoke with Fisher, 30, about his heroic gig as Victor Stone, aka Cyborg.
What was your relationship with Cyborg before?
I encountered him for the first time during the “Teen Titans” cartoon show in the early 2000s. I didn’t know much about him in the comic book sense up until I booked the role. And at that point, they ended up sending me just about every Cyborg comic there was. And I fell in love with Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s original version of Cyborg from the “Teen Titans.” I feel a lot of the character inspiration came from that iteration of Cyborg.
Who is Victor Stone to you?
Victor Stone is a college quarterback who plays for Gotham City University, at least in our iteration. He has a genius-level intellect. He has an IQ of 170 and he’s born to two genius-level intellect parents who work in Star Labs. One day an accident befalls both him and his mother, which takes most of his body and takes the life of his mother. And his father, who he has a very, very strained and sordid relationship with, takes it upon himself to attempt to keep Victor alive using this alien technology. Now he does save Victor’s life but he effectively turns him into a Cyborg. So it ends up taking a bad relationship and turning it even worse when Victor wakes up and realizes everything that happens to him and who turned him into what he considers to be a monster.
How does the costume work?
I was in a onesie. In a green screen onesie. It looked like a patchwork quilt. With a blue arm, a gray arm, a brown leg and a blue leg. And they had these flat white dots to track my motions. I looked pretty ridiculous. The only practical effect on the costume was an LED light that I wore over my left eye and there was a chest piece that I wore, which emitted an LED light as well. … It was pretty ridiculous to watch. I swear, I must work with some of the greatest actors in the business for them to be able to look at me with a straight face and imagine that I am what I’m pretending to be.
This is your second time as Cyborg, and a few more films are lined up. How long do you see yourself playing this role?
Hopefully if audiences respond, we’ll keep going on. … For me, I wouldn’t mind playing Victor Stone for any number of years so long as the stories remain interesting and the characters continue to develop. … Hopefully at the end of “Justice League” people will get just enough of a taste of Victor Stone to say, “I want to see what his next adventure is going to be. I want to see how he continues his healing process. I’m interested in figuring out where he goes next.”
