Ryan Reynolds, GQ Man of the Year for 2016 (read our profile here), has spent the last two decades living like a Maﬁa don conspiring in the back of a gelato shop. Reynolds’s front was a couple of decades of midsize ﬁlm hits and clever talk-show appearances. Of course, the hidden racket was Deadpool, which went on to become the highest-grossing R-rated ﬁlm of all time.

It was also an 11-year odyssey that spanned multiple regimes at 20th Century Fox and caused Reynolds to have what he describes as “a little bit of a nervous breakdown.” So: Why was it so hard to get this movie made? We spoke to Reynolds for our Man of the Year issue to find out.

Reynolds had spent years trying to persuade 20th Century Fox to let him play Deadpool. But when the opportunity finally came up in 2007, it was under less than ideal circumstances: