source– Jackman didn’t know wolverines were real things. He thought it was a play on “wolf.” According to Page Six, Jackman said at a panel, “I literally, embarrassingly did about two weeks of research on wolves. I was rehearsing for three weeks and I was shooting, so I was kind of on my own.”
While on the set of 2000’s X-Men, director Bryan Singer noticed something was not right: “He said, ‘Are you sort of walking funny, what’s going on?’ And I said, ‘I’ve been doing this thing with wolves,’ and he goes, ‘You know you’re not a wolf, right?‘”
“I said, ‘Well, there’s no such thing as a wolverine,‘” Jackman said, erroneously. He was instructed to “go to the zoo, dude.”
Alright, as an amateur expert zoologist, I’m sure everyone’s expecting to tear my guy Hugh to shreds for such ignorance. How can someone not know that the source of inspiration for the character he’s spent half his life playing was a real creature? He’s a superstar actor, surely he has enough spare time to do a second of research. I mean, he’s spent enough time in America to have heard plenty about wolverines, after all. Did he think Michigan named it’s teams after nonsense? No, I’m not going to criticize him for that kind of ignorance. Everyone gets one moment of stupidity every now and then. What I’m really upset with him about is the fact that he doubted the existence of any animal as an Australian.
He’s seen the kind of things in his backyard, right? There’s an entire clade of animals that only exists there. You literally can’t find marsupials anywhere else in the world because they’re too weird. Koalas are like the most normal looking. Kangaroos are pretty much people with tails and a worse attitude. And the egg laying mammals are complete freaks. I mean, echidnas? Look at these things:
And platypuses?
He lives with these things and he thinks wolverines are fake? What? Are Australians’ views of the world so skewed by the monsters that live next door that they can’t even fathom what normal animals are like? Are they so used to crazy reptiles that spit poison out of every part of their body that a regular old wolverine seems fake? How can you run around with giant snakes and alligators and dingos and emus and the like and have the nerve to think any animal can be fake? That’s what everyone should be questioning here. I refuse to believe Hugh actually thought that there were animals that didn’t exist. If I were Australian I’d believe in pretty much any legend you told me, because odds are I’ve already seen worse. That’s why I think this is fake. Just a story Hugh made up to seem more relatable. Sorry, Hugh, I’m not buying it. You’re not like me. I can’t be Wolverine. Telling me a made up tale about not knowing wolverines exist doesn’t make me like me like you more.
The GOAT of educational videos:
Brian's Den 