If you were aware of all the Spider-Man: No Way Home rumors, you probably noticed something very unusual about the promotion of the movie. Sony and Marvel decided not to have Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield appear anywhere during the press tour. The former Spider-Man actors did not show up in the trailers, and they were not invited to the red carpet premiere. If it weren’t for the massive number of leaks, we really wouldn’t have had any clue. The No Way Home junket is even stranger in hindsight. Sure, we saw Tom Holland, Jacob Batalon, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, and the returning Spider-Man villains promoting the movie. But they all had to lie about almost everything. Thankfully, all three Spider-Man actors can finally show up in interviews together. And they’re promoting No Way Home for a surprising reason: Oscar consideration.
The No Way Home Oscar campaign
Superhero movies don’t usually stand a chance of competing for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. But No Way Home has at least a fighting chance.
This coming-of-age tale is the perfect wrap on two decades of Spider-Man storytelling for Sony. No Way Home is actually the eighth movie to bring a live-action Peter Parker to the big screen.
While not perfect, No Way Home has received praising reviews from critics and fans. On top of that, the film is about $300 million shy of hitting $2 billion at the box office during a pandemic.
Is that enough for No Way Home to score Oscar nominations? We’ll soon find out. But Sony is certainly pushing the movie for awards consideration. And the people involved closely in making this once-in-a-lifetime Spider-Man movie possible are finally able to talk freely about what it was like to work on the project.
The Spider-Man interviews you need to see
We saw Tom Holland promoting No Way Home during the press tour, where all he did was lie, according to the actor. And we saw Garfield promote his other 2021 movies just as No Way Home rumors ran rampant. But we never got to see Maguire address Spider-Man rumors last year. That’s because he did not have to do any press tours for other productions.
This brings us to Deadline’s interview that features all three actors. This is the kind of interview we never got to see until now. Here are a few tidbits:
Tom Holland on that Spider-Men scene
“One of my favorite things to do at the minute is to go online and watch fans’ reactions to you guys coming in that one scene in particular,” Holland told Maguire and Garfield over video chat. “I don’t think I could ever have imagined it as being so well received by everyone. I mean, I guess I had an idea that people would love this movie, but in no way, shape or form could I have thought it was going to be as big as it has been. And it’s been… only the last couple weeks that I have sort of really come back to reality and come home and started to face real-world problems, and it feels like we’ve been on some sort of really weird dream. It feels really strange.”
Tobey Maguire on getting the No Way Home pitch
“In that conversation, the intention, the kind of love and celebration of these movies and what it meant, I think, to Amy [Pascal] and Kevin [Feige] was apparent,” Maguire said. “And to me, when artists or, you know, people who are steering the creative process have a kind of authentic, genuine intent of celebration and love, it just was so apparent in both of them, that, I don’t know, I just wanted to join that. And I’m a big fan of Tom and those movies and Andrew. So, it was definitely intriguing, but yes, I was also going, ‘well, what are we going to do? And that was a bit mysterious.”
Andrew Garfield on being the werewolf
“I justified my unethical lying behavior,” Garfield recalled. “I call it fibbing more than lying, but I kind of enjoyed it. It was quite fun, and it felt like that game Werewolf or Mafia where, you know, you’re the werewolf and you have to convince everyone that you’re not. So I kind of turned it into a little bit of a game for myself… even though there were all these leaks and all this stuff happening, I think there was enough doubt in everyone’s mind going, ‘Oh, god, what if it isn’t? What if they don’t show up?’”
Other Oscar nominations for No Way Home
Sony isn’t campaigning only for a Best Picture Oscar nomination for No Way Home. Director Jon Watts could very well be in the running for Best Director. Watts helmed all three MCU Spider-Man movies, with No Way Home being the kind of unique film that his predecessors could not make.
It’s not that No Way Home reunited three Spider-Man actors into a single movie. It’s that Sony and Marvel had to shoot it during the pandemic, with all the challenges that came with that. Watts talked to Variety about making No Way Home.
One of the exciting tidbits the director revealed was the Spider-Man “therapy session.” Before filming the first scene, he sat with Toby Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon.
“We sat on folding chairs in a circle and went through the script together. 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,” Watts said. “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.”
Whether No Way Home gets any Oscar nominations or not, you should check out these new interviews in full Variety’s Watts interview is available at this link. And here you’ll find Deadline’s interview with the three Spider-Man. Deadline posted that video chat on YouTube as well — see it below:
