'I Owe That To Him': Tom Holland Shares How Robert Downey Jr. Advocated For Him During Spider-Man Debut In Civil War
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In just a few years, Tom Holland has become one of the most bankable young film stars. Those of us who have spent years watching the Marvel movies in order now that he became a household name after debuting as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War (which is streaming with a Disney+ subscription). And Holland recently shares how Robert Downey Jr. advocated for him during his first MCU project.
While fans are eager to learn about when Tom Holland might return as Peter Parker in an upcoming Marvel movie, the 28 year-old actor is also looking back to how it all began. During an appearance on the Rich Roll podcast, Holland spoke about his connection with RDJ, which began during his audition. As he put it:
I'm very grateful to Downey because, I think I've told this story before, when I did my audition my audition was like eight pages of dialogue. It was a long scene. Typically an audition will be two pages.[...] And the scene with Downey was great, the audition went really well.
Holland and Downey had killer chemistry throughout their appearances together in the MCU, including Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Avengers: Infinity War. And it sounds like that began in the audition room before it extended to an actual film set, with Holland sharing that the Oscar-winning actor helped give him freedom to improvise.
But it was on the set of Captain America: Civil War where Robert Downey Jr. really stuck up for Tom Holland. Later in the same podcast appearance, the Uncharted actor shared how he helped him have a larger role in the blockbuster. In his words:
When I got to set after I'd got the gig, we came to set I was meeting Marissa Tomei for the first time and I was now working with The Russos. And Downey was there. My scene had been cut down significantly from what I'd done in the audition to now a page and a half or maybe even two pages. And we start shooting the scene and Downey piped up and was like 'Where's all the kid's lines gone?' And The Russos sort of said 'Look, this already a 140 page script. We can't spend too much time on this.' And Downey was the one that was like 'No, you're going to want to spend some time on this. Let's shoot the whole thing from the audition. You can always cut it, but you'd want to have it.'
What a class act. While RDJ has his own job to do as Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War, he also seemed to be focus on Tom Holland's experience joining the MCU as Peter Parker. And after working on the long audition scene, he felt the younger actor deserved a chance to film the scene in its entirety... even if the Russo Brothers ultimately decided to leave it on the cutting room floor.
So what actually happened in the end? It turned out that Robert Downey Jr. was right in the end, and The Russo Brothers kept the larger version of Peter Parker's introduction scene. As he shared:
They used all of it. So I owe that to him. And I think that's really cool.
As previously mentioned, fans are eager to learn about Holland's return to the MCU, especially after Spider-Man: No Way Home's ending. While appearing on the podcast Holland confirmed he'd seen a draft of Spider-Man 4, which is a thrilling step forward. Hopefully more information comes sooner rather than later.
The next MCU movie hitting theaters is Captain America: Brave New World on February 14th. While we wait, check the 2025 movie release dates.