It was the worst-kept secret in Hollywood that Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire would be suiting up and swinging back into action as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, but it was much easier for the latter to keep it a secret.
Tom Holland’s third solo outing marked Maguire’s first live-action onscreen appearance in over seven years, with the actor and producer maintaining a relatively low public profile in the years since the release of Pawn Sacrifice in September 2014.
On the other side of the coin, Garfield was hitting the promotional circuit hard for both Netflix musical Tick, Tick… Boom! and biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, where he was inundated with Spidey-related questions, all of which were denied or refuted.
Now the cat is out of the bag, though, Marc Webb’s Peter Parker is reveling in being able to talk about his contributions to No Way Home, revealing during a recent appearance on The Jess Cagle Show that he spent two weeks with Maguire workshopping their returning web-slingers.
“He took a little bit of a sabbatical from acting for a while, much to my dismay, because I’m such a huge fan of him as an actor. He’s been focusing on other things and producing and life. It was so awesome to be able to be present for him being on a film set as an actor again, and especially as that character. I grew up idolizing Tobey in that role and he’s such a huge part of that character for me, and just being a fan of him as an actor.
We had this amazing period of a couple of weeks before we started shooting where we were just kind of workshopping. We were throwing ideas around of what the relationship could develop into, what the dynamic could be, what the feeling towards each other is, and when we first see each other versus when we part ways, what’s the journey of that? It felt protected. It was very strange. It didn’t feel like we were doing this big Spider-Man film.
It felt like Tobey and I were really just working on a relationship between two characters and using our imaginations and playing. It felt very, very playful, like we were kind of two friends making a little Spider-Man short film and going, ‘Wouldn’t this be cool?'” Garfield said. “I think he really started to remember his connection to acting as well, his love of it, as if no time had passed.”
The pair even famously sneaked into a screening of Spider-Man: No Way Home in disguise to gauge the fan reactions to their comebacks, and it’s evident Peters 1, 2, and 3 have formed a strong bond outside of their shared superhero personas.
