There have been a few conspiracies on whether Joe Pantoliano’s character in The Matrix really did, with the actor spilling the beans on how the Wachowskis fed him a lie about Cypher’s fate.
At New York Comic Con, the actor spoke at a panel alongside fellow co-star Laurence Fishburne and revealed, “They lied to me! They f—ing lied!”
The actor goes on to explain that he was wrong to have told the sibling duo his story of how he managed to bring back his character for The Fugitive sequel. He recalls Harrison Ford amped up about the death of Cosmo Renfro and how audiences would feel sorry for him. Instead of accepting it, Pantoliano asked, “What if there’s a sequel?”
Ford was less than enthusiastic about the idea and told Pantaliano, “because I won’t do this piece of s— again.”
“And I said, famously, ‘Well, f— you. We’ll just chase some other $20 million a–hole through the woods.’ And then Harrison came out, ‘You’re doing it! You’re doing it!’ So I told that to the Wachowskis,” said The Matrix actor.
While working on the 1999 science fiction movie, the actor was on a phone call with Lilly and asked if he was going to get killed off. The Wachowskis were unaware that Pantoliano heard something he wasn’t supposed to.
“And Lilly said, ‘Hey, Lana, he doesn’t want us to kill him.’ And I heard Lana off camera, knowing that I could hear this, and she said, ‘Well, just lie to him and we’ll kill him anyway,'” said the actor.
For many fans, it remains unclear whether Cypher is actually dead in the Matrix universe, as the movie doesn’t show his dead body. Regardless, Pantoliano is still unhappy with his character’s fate, especially when they brought back Agent Smith.
Speaking about returning to the franchise, he says, “It’s never too late.”
