Andrew Garfield has revealed that he only told three people in advance about his role in Spider-Man: No Way Home.
By deciding to confide in just his father, mother and brother, Garfield chose to keep the secret as closely held as he could manage – not even confirming his Amazing Spider-Man co-star Emma Stone’s suspicions.
Garfield, along with former webslinger Tobey Maguire, appeared in the latest Spider-Man instalment, which sees Tom Holland portray the titular superhero.
“I lied to people for a good two years and I lied to the internet for two years, and it felt great,” Garfield told The Ellen DeGeneres Show, adding that only three people in his life besides his agent knew that he was filming.
“My dad, my brother, and my mother just kind of us. It was fun to keep it a secret,” Garfield added. “It felt like I was organising a surprise birthday party for a bunch of people who I knew would appreciate it.”
Stone, who played Gwen Stacy opposite Garfield’s Peter Parker in 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man and its 2014 sequel, was even kept in the dark.
“Emma kept on texting me,” Garfield said on a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy, Sad, Confused podcast. “She was like, ‘Are you in this new Spider-Man film?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”
“I kept it going, even with her,” he continued. “And then she saw it. She was like, ‘You’re a jerk.’”
The news follows Spider-Man: No Way Home becoming the sixth highest grossing film of all time at the box office, currently collecting $1.69billion (£1.25bn).
The film, which was released last month, became the first Hollywood film to gross over $1bn since 2019, reaching the milestone in just 12 days.
As Deadline has reported, the Holland-starring film, which sat in eighth in the all-time list until recently, has now overtaken Jurassic World ($1.67bn) and The Lion King ($1.662bn), with a current taking of $970.1m at the international box office.
