Would you be nervous if you needed to phone Sir Ben Kingsley – always “Sir Ben”, you do not trifle with the title – and convince him to be in your film?

You should be nervous. Destin Daniel Cretton would be the first to tell you that he was anxious when he called Kingsley at his London home to ask him if he might reprise the role of the washed-up, drug-addled actor Trevor Slattery, who was first seen in Iron Man 3 in 2013.

Kingsley portrayed Slattery again the following year in a fun 14-minute short titled All Hail the King, which explored the character’s Shakespearean training and devoted relationship with his mother.

Cretton wanted Kingsley to play Slattery again in the 2021 Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. He had an elaborate pitch, which he painstakingly rehearsed and refined. But once Kingsley answered the phone, Cretton went off script and started gushing, telling Kingsley what an honour it was to even be talking with him.

Kingsley cut him off.

“Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty,” Kingsley told him. And before Cretton could come back to his notes, Kingsley turned the tables and began grilling him.

“What do you know about Liverpool?” he asked, testing Cretton’s knowledge of Slattery’s hometown. “How far back do you go with British comedy?”