Now that it’s been over a month since Spider-Man: No Way Home was released in theatres, we can finally talk freely about the film’s fun surprises, including the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in their respective Spider-Man roles. We all heard rumors about the possibility of their return, but we didn’t know for sure until we saw it on the big screen. After that, we just had to be sure that we didn’t spoil the movie for our families and friends who hadn’t see it yet. But the actors involved had a much bigger job, keeping from everyone in the world for the past year.
In a recent interview that Garfield gave on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he explained that protecting his return as Peter Parker/Spider-Man for No Way Home meant he even had to lie to his former co-star Emma Stone. Garfield and Stone starred together as Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy in the Marc Webb-directed The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. While Garfield’s return for this most recent film was heavily rumored, the actor said he lied to everyone he knew in order to protect the major secret. He said:
“Emma [Stone] kept on texting and she was like, ‘Are you in this new ‘Spider-Man’ film?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She was like, ‘Shut up. Just tell me.’ And I’m like, ‘I honestly don’t know.’ I kept it going even with her. It’s hilarious.”
Garfield said at no point leading up to the film’s release did he tell Stone the truth, adding:
“And then she saw it. She was like, ‘You’re a jerk.’ I didn’t want to tell anyone. I took it super seriously. I told no one.”
Garfield talked to Variety about reprising the role, saying:
“I wasn’t expecting to ever have a conversation again about potentially playing Peter Parker. I felt very excited to just to be a fan again. But I got this call from Amy Pascal and Kevin Feige and Jon Watts with this idea. It was immediately undeniable. It sounded incredibly fun, incredibly spiritual — trippy and thematically interesting. On a base level, as a Spider-Man fan, just the idea of seeing three Spider-Men in the same frame was enough.”
It was enough, indeed. I’m so glad the film turned out the way it did, and I commend Garfield for keeping a lid on the secret. I’m even more proud of Tom Holland, who is notoriously terrible about revealing plot details in the past. Maybe they didn’t even tell him about the secret! After all, he was told that Tony Stark’s funeral was a wedding.