Tom Holland has told GQ magazine in a new interview, that he had to stop during filming of the finale of Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and say “I don’t believe what I’m saying” – leading to the scene being re-written.
Holland speaks frankly in the interview about the pressures of working constantly and of fame, which he’s had to cope with since he was cast as Spider-Man, aged 19. He also discusses the chaotic conditions in which No Way Home was made, with them starting to film before several key cast-members had even signed on. “Some people were trying to figure out whether they wanted to do it, and we needed all of them or none,” Holland says.
No Way Home was originally supposed to come out after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but pandemic rescheduling moved it to before. This meant there had to be significant rewrites, even during filming. “You could ask the director, ‘What happens in act three?’ And his response would be, ‘I’m still trying to figure it out,'” Holland says.
The day finally came to shoot the big finale: “the crescendo scene, like, is this really f*cking happening? It’s crazy.” Only, it wasn’t working. “I kept stopping and being like, ‘I’m so sorry, I just don’t believe what I’m saying.'”
“We sat down, we went through it, and we came up with a new idea,” Holland says. “Then we pitched it to the writers, they rewrote it, and it works great.” Holland describes this as a sign of a new-found confidence that he wouldn’t have had on previous films.
No Way Home is, at the present time, Holland’s last contractually-obligated Spider-Man film. In theory, he could now hang up the spandex and web-shooters and move on from the MCU. Holland has ambitions to direct, as well as live a more normal life for someone in his mid-20s. It is highly unlikely that this will be the last we see of Holland’s Spidey, but it will be interesting to see where Holland goes from here.