Aaron Paul’s Clayface cameo was supposed to be much longer, so here’s why it was really cut

Aaron Paul is best known for playing Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, but the actor also has a surprise cameo in DC Studios’ Clayface. 

Paul appears briefly as Jimmy “One Nut” Hagen, the abusive father of Matt Hagen, played by Tom Rhys Harries. In the finished film, Paul appears during the violent nightclub sequence at Vesuvius. Matt confronts Markos Szabo and his girlfriend, Mia Torrez, as he seeks revenge on the people who ruined his life. Matt transforms into his deceased father to confront the gangster responsible for Jimmy’s death. 

But his role in Clayface was originally much bigger, with director James Watkins revealing that several scenes featuring Paul were cut from the final film. 

So, why was Aaron Paul’s role in Clayface cut?

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, director James Watkins explained that Paul filmed additional flashback scenes over a few days, showing Matt’s childhood and his abusive relationship with his father. However, the team was never completely sure how much of that material would make it into the final film.

Watkins said, “In terms of trying to figure out the character, it was, How much is Matt defined by his past and how much is he an everyman? At one point, we were looking at it and thinking, Is it the ‘sins of the father’? But actually, as we worked on the script, I thought that notion of revenge was more universal and more relatable to all of us.”

He continued, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re carrying a trauma or any of that. If we’re slighted, we carry this sense of being wronged and we all want to do something, but generally in life we can’t do anything about it and we’re powerless.”

Watkins also explained that Matt is not simply a villain who wants to become a good person. “With Matt, it’s not that he’s a bad guy trying to be good,” he said. “He’s a decent guy, but then like all people, we all have primal impulses within us that can be dangerous, whether that’s impulses for love, whether that’s impulses for retribution.”

The director also called the Vesuvius nightclub sequence “the dark glee of the film”. He wanted audiences to enjoy Matt’s shape-shifting abilities at first, before feeling uncomfortable as his revenge becomes increasingly brutal.

So, cutting most of Paul’s scenes helped keep the focus on that journey rather than spending too much time explaining Matt’s past.

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