Marvel’s Biggest Stars Are Keeping Up A Frightening Charade?

Hugh Jackman was a Marvel star before the MCU even existed, and most of the speculation about steroid use came from comparing how he looked in the very first X-Men to how he looked in later films, including Days of Future Past and Deadpool & Wolverine. Those latter two films featured Jackman looking absolutely ripped, and for the most part, nobody complained about the eye candy.

But getting insanely buffer as you get older isn’t how things work for most people, triggering lasting speculation about steroid use that recently took on new life via social media.

Recently, influencer Noam Blum took to X (formerly known as Twitter) and weighed in on whether Jackman and other Marvel stars famed for their physiques were using steroids or not. “It’s steroids,” he said. “I don’t know why everyone still insists on this weird industry-wide denial.”

He went on to note that denying that Marvel stars are using steroids is “fine” because “this isn’t a professional sports competition.” As he put in, “Steroids aren’t illegal” and “They all do it with steroids.”

This kicked off a new round of speculation about whether our favorite stars are secretly juicing in order to get so ripped. To help get to the bottom of the issue, The Wrap reached out to Jay Campbell, author of The Testosterone Optimization Therapy Bible. In this expert’s opinion, “there’s zero chance” Marvel icon Jackman hasn’t used steroids for these films because ”he has the chiseled appearance of an intelligent androgen user.”

Historically, Jackman has denied using steroids. Recently, though, he posted an audio message on social media in which he praised his team for helping to get him in shape for Deadpool & Wolverine. It’s possible (likely, even) that he just wanted to single his Marvel trainers out for praise, but considering that Jackman didn’t explicitly deny using steroids in this message, some fans think he is tacitly admitting that the rumors are true.

While Hugh Jackman is currently the primary focus of this speculation, other Marvel stars have previously kicked off intense fan speculation about potential steroid use. This includes Kumail Nanjiani putting on 37 pounds of muscle (at least, according to his trainer) in a year for his role as Kingo in Eternals and Chris Hemsworth putting on 40 pounds of muscle in five months for his provocative full-frontal scene in Thor: Love and Thunder. Both of those stars have denied using steroids to achieve those muscles, instead insisting that this was just the product of hard work and talented personal trainers.

While a spokesperson for Nanjiani would later say he only put on 5 pounds of muscle, the idea of Marvel stars putting on dozens of pounds of muscle in a short time frame without steroids seems absurd to certain experts. That’s because, even with an intense regimen of diet and exercise, the human body can only naturally develop between 8-15 pounds of muscle in a year.

The fact that both stars allegedly developed such insane physiques while both of them were knocking on middle age (Hemsworth was just under 40, and Nanjiani was just over) makes such natural gains seem even more unlikely.

There is obviously some major irony here: the Marvel Cinematic Universe is built on the back of countless special effects, so fans are clinging to the idea of stars bulking up without steroids. After all, such muscles always stand out as something that seems more authentic than the CGI effects that often seem to fill every frame.

Unfortunately, it seems more and more likely that the hot physiques on display in movies like Deadpool & Wolverine are about as authentic as Bruce Banner’s head in the Hulkbuster suit in Infinity War.

Source: The Wrap