Tom Holland looks up to Robert Downey Jr. just as much as Peter Parker looks up to “Mr. Stark.”
Holland, 28, shared on the Thursday, October 17, episode of “The Rich Roll Podcast” how Downey stopped his first-ever scene as Spider-Man from being cut down.
The British actor first appeared as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spidey in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. In the movie, Downey’s Iron Man recruits Spidey to the Avengers.
“I am a diehard fan of the studio. I felt like I sort of won some competition and was allowed to be on set for the day,” Holland recalled of shooting his first scene as Spider-Man opposite Downey and Marisa Tomei, who played Peter’s Aunt May.
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The actor then mentioned his initial screen test for the movie opposite Downey, which featured “eight pages of dialogue … it was a long scene.” He said that “typically, an audition will be two pages.”
When it came time to shoot the scene after landing the part, Holland recalled the dialogue “had been cut down significantly from what I had done in the audition to now a page-and-a-half, or maybe two pages.”
That’s when Downey stood up for the young actor, who said the gesture was “so great and so sweet.”
“Downey piped up and said, ‘Where’s all the kid’s lines gone?’” Holland explained. “[The directors] the Russos said, ‘Well, look, this is already a 140-page script. We can’t spend too much time on this.’ And Downey was the one that was like, ‘No, no, no, you’re going to want to spend some time on this. Let’s shoot the whole thing from the audition. You can always cut it but you’d want to have it.’”
“They used all of it,” Holland went on. “I owe that to him. I think that’s really cool. I’d like to one day do that. If I’d be lucky enough to somehow bring [fellow Spider-Man] Miles Morales into my Spider-Man universe and into the MCU, I’d love to do for a young kid what Downey did for me.”
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On the podcast, Holland also gave an update on the fourth installment in his Spider-Man franchise, following 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. The actor said he and his girlfriend/costar Zendaya have read a script for the movie and are excited about it.
“We have a creative and we have a pitch and a draft, which is excellent,” said Holland, who has played Spider-Man in six Marvel films. “It needs work, but the writers are doing a great job. I read it three weeks ago and it really lit a fire in me. Zendaya and I sat down and read it together, and we at times were bouncing around the living room. Like, this is a real movie worthy of the fans’ respect.”
