Tenoch Huerta is officially the breakout star of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The Mexican actor has received praise from both critics and fans for his portrayal of the antagonist Namor, along with a not-insubstantial amount of thirst. But we very nearly saw more of him.
A viral tweet has been doing the rounds showing an on-set photo of Huerta in costume, next to a version of the same image from the final movie, and let’s just say that in the original picture he is… really filling out those green shorts. “Give Namor his penis back,” the tweet demands, and as of today more than 127,000 people seem to echo that sentiment.
The bulge came up again (figuratively) in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, during which Huerta joked that the edited photo was the real one, before confirming that yes, his VPL—visible penis line—was digitally edited out of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to keep it family-friendly.
“Every man in the world, we have fragile masculinity, but not in that issue,” he said. “I will say, the right one, the real one is the photo on the right.”
The skintight nature of superhero costumes mean this issue does tend to arise from time to time. During the press tour for Spider-Man: No Way Home, Andrew Garfield joked that he and his fellow Peter Parker actors Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire kept getting distracted by each other’s bulges. And long before the days of CGI, Burt Ward, who played Robin on ABC’s Batman!, was considered too well-endowed for his costume and was prescribed medication that would “shrink” the problem.
Now that’s heroism.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
