Tom Holland recently reminisced about auditioning for Spider-Man and finding out he won the part – and the story involves him breaking a computer!
In a conversation with Black Panther’s Daniel Kaluuya for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, both men discussed their most recent films (Cherry for Holland and Judas and the Black Messiah for Kaluuya). Since Holland and Kaluuya share a Marvel connection, of course the conversation went, at one point, in the MCU direction.
Kaluuya asked how Spider-Man changed Holland’s life, and boy, did he have a lot to say! Before scoring the iconic role, there was the interview process, which he called “horrible.” After months of waiting and six auditions, Holland headed down to Atlanta for a screen test with Robert Downey Jr. “It’s the best audition I’ve ever done. Him and I were riffing off each other,” Holland said. “My agents told me that Marvel likes you to learn the words exactly — you can’t improvise… And then, on the first take, Downey just completely changed the scene.” So naturally, Holland went with it! Obviously, that audition went well, but Holland heard no news for a while. Finally, Marvel asked him back over six weeks later to test a fight scene with Chris Evans, which he called “surreal.” Though Holland recalls he wasn’t high on fan polls for the role, he was just happy at that point to have had the experience of auditioning with such top talents.
Some time passed, yet again, with no communication from Marvel. So, Holland figured he didn’t win the role. Then, one day scrolling through Instagram he saw Marvel had posted an image of the cartoon Spidey, urging fans to go to their website to find out who the next Spider-Man would be. “By this point I kind of had assumed I hadn’t got it, because no one had called me,” Holland said. But, with his dog sitting next to him, he looked it up anyway and was surprised to read the words, “We would like to introduce our new Spider-Man, Tom Holland!” Yes, he found out he won the role by reading it on the internet. “I broke my computer because I like flipped it up in the air,” Holland recalled. “It fell off my bed. My dog went nuts. I ran downstairs, I was telling my family ‘I got it! I got it! I got the part! I got the part!’” While his brother thought it may have been a hack, soon the calls came in confirming the news!
What a story! We’re excited to see Holland back in action in his third solo Spidey movie (hopefully) later this year.