Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts has revealed in a recent chat with Variety that the coming together of Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s Spideys was a therapeutic experience for all of them.
The threequel to the MCU’s Spider-Man franchise is currently the sixth highest-grossing film of all time, in no small part thanks to the hype that Garfield and Maguire generated by reprising their roles as the other two live-action versions of the friendly neighborhood webhead.
Asking the former stars back and coordinating them with Holland must have been an undertaking the likes of which cinema has never seen before, though one can’t help but wonder if the job also placed a lot of pressure on the actors themselves.
While both of them had a relatively successful run and were beloved by fans, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing for Andrew in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, nor was it for Maguire in Spider-Man 3. For all they knew, No Way Home could further ruin things with fans, though it seems that after sitting down together for the first time, the three Spider-Men worked things out.
“We sat on folding chairs in a circle and went through the script together,” Watts explains. “I had talked to everyone separately, but to have everyone together to talk about the story, how the pieces fit together and what Spider-Man meant to them — that was exciting for me. We had the only three actors to ever play Spider-Man in a film, and each had been through so much, on and off-screen. It was like a Spider-Man therapy session.”
When asked if he had any anxious thoughts, Watts said: “The only thing I was nervous about is that I’d miss something great. As a director, you always keep your eyes and ears open.” Well, so far as we’re concerned, and given all the praise folks have been heaping on No Way Home, the filmmaker didn’t “miss” anything too big.
