Even though Mahershala Ali’s voiceover debut in the MCU was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in the Eternals post-credit scene, which was so obscure that many moviegoers were immediately sent running to their phones to look up who the voice actually belonged to, the new Blade actor revealed that the relatively insignificant moment was one that gave him anxiety and sleepless nights. While promoting his new Apple movie Swan Song on The Late Show, Ali was obviously drawn into a short discussion about his upcoming addition to the MCU, and that vocal debut in Eternals, which he explained to host Stephen Colbert proved to be a daunting task.

“You lose a lot of sleep over it. I was losing sleep over this line because, ideally, you want to be talking once you are filming. One hundred percent of the time, my first day on any set, on any job, I hate it. I hate how I sound. I don’t believe myself. You’re trying to get comfortable in the character, so to have to talk before you actually film was challenging.”

This is not the first time Ali has spoken about the pressure of joining such a huge franchise as Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, as well as taking over a role that has already been successfully brought to screens by another actor – namely Wesley Snipes who played Blade in a trilogy of movies – and he revealed in an interview with Empire Magazine that even a simple voice role “brought up some very real anxieties.”

The addition of Blade to the MCU is one that has been teased for some time, and as with every big Marvel character out there, the expectation is that at some point they will find themselves taking part in cinemas biggest interconnected narrative in the history of motion pictures, which at its current rate is one that will never have that crown taken from it. With the sheer scale of that in mind, it is not hard to understand why any newcomer at this point is going to feel a bit of trepidation when stepping up to the plate for their first swing at a new role.

This week a leaked document suggested that Blade will commence filming in Summer 2022, which would put a release date for the movie somewhere in 2024 considering everything up to that point is jam-packed full as the busy Marvel Studios schedule continues to adapt to the impact of Covid-19. With the news of the shooting schedule, came a very basic plot outline for the movie, which did not nail down many specifics but did give a sense of the direction the movie will be taking.

“Himself a half-human/half-vampire, “Daywalker” Eric Brooks (Mahershala Ali) has honed his abilities to hunt down the undead who have long terrorized mankind. A human-vampire hybrid since his tragic birth, Blade has spent his long life seeking to rid the world of vampires like the one that killed his mother. Over the years, he has mastered his own style of fighting monsters of all kinds.”

You can see the information as it was revealed by Moviebuff1219 below.