Lin-Manuel Miranda figured out Andrew Garfield was in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

The spoliers in Spider-Man: No Way Home were perhaps Marvel Studios’ worst kept secret, what with details about the film’s script leaking months before it made to the theaters. One such revelation was Andrew Garfield’s presence in the MCU film. But while the actor deserves an Oscar just for how vehemently he denied his involvement leading up to the film’s release, he failed to maintain his savvy conversation tactics with Lin-Manuel Miranda who figured out that he was making a comeback as the webbed slinger months before Spider-Man 3’s theatrical debut. 

While rumors of Andrew Garfield’s involvement in the film were swirling in 2021, the actor was busy shooting for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s biographical music drama, Tick, Tick… Boom! Thus, the day it leaked for the first time that he has also joined Spider-Man: No Way Home as the Peter Parker from an alternate universe, the Silence star was filming with the director. Though Garfield had been expertly sidestepped the questions of the media, when Miranda asked him, he failed to maintain his cool-as-a-cucumber status. 

“So, the day it leaked he might be involved, he was on my set, we were still filming. And between shots, I kind of quietly went over to him and was like, ‘Andrew, are you in the new Spider-Man?’ revealed Lin-Manuel Miranda during his recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

“And his exact reaction was, ‘What? Shut up! Shut up! Ha ha! Shut up!’ And I walked away thinking, ‘Oh, he’s in the new Spider-Man!’ And then when I saw him on your [Fallon] show, he was a total pro at denying it, but he had to get there,” he added. 

While Andrew Garfield fumbled with the truth in front of Miranda, he did manage to get a lot better at spinning lies. After all, who doesn’t remember him brazenly refuting the first leaked images of him dressed up as Spider-Man and claiming that it was a photoshopped photograph? 

In fact, he even lied to his The Amazing Spider-Man co-star, Emma Stone, who played his love interest Gwen Stacy in the 2012 film and its sequel. Garfield shared on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast that like others, Stone too was curious because of all the rumors and kept texting him to know whether he was in Spider-Man 3. 

“And I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’” he shared, adding that when the film finally released in December 2021, Stone was not happy with his crafty lies. “She saw it,” Garfield said, “and she was like, ‘You’re a jerk.'”