How Kevin Feige Got Andrew Garfield To Return As Spider-Man

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home

Andrew Garfield reveals how Kevin Feige convinced him to return for Spider-Man: No Way Home.Whether the new movie would feature surprise appearances from Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s versions of Peter Parker was one of the most buzzed-about stories in Hollywood the past year. In seemingly every interview Garfield did throughout 2021, he was pressed over his involvement, or lack thereof, in the film. And at every turn, he would deny it wholeheartedly. But now that the movie has been released, Garfield finally has the opportunity to discuss what drew him back to Spidey’s iconic suit.

Almost as soon as it was announced that No Way Home would heavily feature the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s multiverse, fan theories started swirling about the possibility of that meaning a return of previous versions of Spider-Man, especially after the success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. That speculation ramped way up when the first trailer for the movie was released, which saw the return of villains from Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy and Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man movies. As more and more information on No Way Home came out, it seemed increasingly likely that the two previous wall-crawlers would show up, but all the way up to the movie’s opening, the official word from Garfield was that he was entirely uninvolved with the film.

Obviously that turned out not to be true and in arguably the movie’s most crowd-pleasing moments, the three Spider-Men join forces as a united front to fight their various enemies together. In an interview with Variety, Garfield discussed his return as the wall-crawler and how Marvel Studios head Feige was able to convince him to take on the mantle once more. While he never expected to be asked to return to the role of Spider-Man, as a fan of the character, Garfield says he couldn’t turn down the opportunity because it offered a chance to explore Peter Parker’s character in a way no solo movies ever could. Read Garfield’s full comments below:

I wasn’t expecting to ever have a conversation again about potentially playing Peter Parker. I felt very excited to just to be a fan again. But I got this call from Amy Pascal and Kevin Feige and Jon Watts with this idea. It was immediately undeniable. It sounded incredibly fun, incredibly spiritual — trippy and thematically interesting. On a base level, as a Spider-Man fan, just the idea of seeing three Spider-Men in the same frame was enough.

The pitch was really, really enticing. They said, “You played this character in your way and what would you want to explore if you had an opportunity? If you were dumped into this other universe and faced with this younger you and this older you, how will you respond?”

We talked a lot about mentorship. We talked a lot about brotherhood and about what it is to be the older brother, younger brother and the middle brother. There’s also a thing of seeing someone you love walking down a path that you’ve already walked down, and you know it doesn’t lead the place where you ultimately meant to go.

That character is isolated in his emotional experience and physical experience. But what happens when that aloneness gets blasted open, and you come to realize that you’ve never been alone and there are other brothers going through the exact same thing? That’s a big spiritual journey to go on, man. And then we just milked out all the fun that we could possibly have.

Considering how many times Garfield was pressed for info in the months leading up to No Way Home‘s release, it’s almost an impressive feat that he was able to not let anything slip. This is especially true when contrasted against Tom Holland, who is notorious for giving away MCU spoilers in his press tours. Maguire got off lucky when it came to keeping the secret. Besides No Way Home, he didn’t have any projects released in 2021 and was therefore not subject to a litany of interviews before Spider-Man‘s release. Garfield, on the other hand, had to promote both The Eyes of Tammy Faye and tick, tick… BOOM! in the past year, and it seemed every interviewer had the same question regarding the web-slinger.

It seems it didn’t take too much convincing to get Garfield to return for the new movie. The move paid off big time in Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s box office numbers and offered some of the best fan service moments the MCU has seen to date. It’s anyone’s guess whether or not the previous Peter Parkers will show up in future Spidey movies, but eager audiences should now know better than to expect Garfield to spill the beans.

Source: Variety

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