Director James Gunn says Bassem Youssef’s DC role was cut before his comments on Israel

Filmmaker and the head of DC Studios James Gunn has set the record straight after US Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef said he thought he lost a role in “Superman: Legacy” due to comments he made about the Israel-Gaza war.

In social media posts Friday, Gunn reshared an IGN article reporting that Youssef’s potential role as dictator Rumaan Harjavti was written out of the upcoming superhero movie before Youssef went viral with a Piers Morgan interview in October. “This is accurate,” he captioned the post.

https://x.com/JamesGunn/status/1758560349001793693?s=20

In a later post, Gunn said he had explained the situation to Youssef. “There isn’t one word against another,” he wrote. “(Bassem) and I talked and we’re good. I understand how he thought things might be (which he was clear about in his interview), and I told him the whole story.”

In an interview with Salon published on Thursday, Youssef said that his “Piers Morgan Uncensored” interview, in which he criticized Israel, cost him the role: “I was a little bit bitter about losing the role, and I was kind of very sad… In the United States of America, you can talk about Joe Biden, you can talk about Donald Trump, but you cannot criticize a foreign government, which is kind of, like, very sad, you know?

“And then because of that, I was cast in the movie Superman, and then they told me, ‘We changed the script,’ after this Piers Morgan interview, and I want to assume good faith,” he added.

“Superman: Legacy” is set to launch the new DC Universe on July 11, 2025.