‘Clayface’ Director James Watkins Explains Aaron Paul’s Cameo: “A Real Brief Easter Egg”

In DC Studios‘ Clayface, Tom Rhys Harries’ titular shape-shifting Batman villain takes multiple forms, including a surprising familiar face.

Following murmurs of a cameo, director James Watkins confirmed that Aaron Paul makes a brief appearance in the DCU movie as Matt’s (Harries) father, who raised him in the slums of Gotham City.

“He has a real brief Easter egg kind of moment,” Watkins told Entertainment Weekly.

While flashbacks of Paul as Matt’s father were ultimately cut from the film, the Breaking Bad alum makes a quick appearance in the action-packed Club Vesuvius scene, in which Matt shape-shifts into multiple people to take on Szabo’s (David Dencik) goons before taking has dad’s form to kill Jimmy “One Nut” (Enzo Squillino Jr.), the gangster who took his father’s life years before.

“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?” the director explained. “At one point, we were looking at it and thinking, Is it the ‘sins of the father’?”

Watkins continued, “But actually, as we worked on the script, I thought that notion of revenge was more universal and more relatable to all of us. 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.”

Now playing in theaters, Clayface stars Harries as rising actor Matt Hagen, who suffers gruesome wounds after the brutal mafioso Szabo (Dencik) cuts up his face, resulting in the downfall of his career. But when he discovers the groundbreaking nanotech research of Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), Matt convinces her to restore his face to its former glory, only to result in terrifying side effects and a bloody quest for revenge.