Tom Holland has taken a step back from social media in recent years, telling his followers in an Instagram video last August that he planned to “delete the app” because he found online discourse to be “detrimental to my mental state.” But while the actor has assumed a cautionary approach to being online, he’s still active in the all-important Spider-Man group chat he first talked about last year.
The current Peter Parker texts regularly with Tobey Maguire, who played the role in the 2000s trilogy, and Andrew Garfield, whose last solo Spidey film was 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2. All three webbed heroes reunited for 2021’s No Way Home and have been in contact ever since. “Myself, Andrew, Tobey—we have this amazing bond as three people who have been through something that is so unique that we really are like brothers,” Holland told The Hollywood Reporter in a new profile. “We have a great group chat and we catch up every now and then. It’s called the Spider-Boys.”
When asked about the last topic they covered, Holland spilled: “I was doing a charity event in London for the Brothers Trust and I was asking if they would be so kind as to sign a poster to auction off. They were obviously happy to oblige.” Otherwise, joked Holland, they use the chat to discuss “Spider-Man stuff.”
Holland also reflected on his regrets about not reaching out to Garfield when he inherited the role of Spider-Man in 2015, only a year after the previous Spider-Man film was met with a lackluster reception. “That’s because of my naïveté as a kid,” he explained. “I was 19 when I got cast. I was so caught up in getting the role that I never took any time to think about what it must have been like for him. If I’d made my second movie and it didn’t necessarily deliver in the way it should have done and they recast me, I would really struggle to bounce back. Andrew bounced back in the most unbelievable way. I just wish I’d called him and just said, ‘You know I can’t turn down this opportunity.’”
Plans for a fourth Holland-led Spider-Man were in full-swing until the writers’ strike halted early development meetings. “It’s a collaborative process. The first few meetings were about, ‘Why would we do this again?’ And I think we found the reason why. I’m really, really happy with where we’re at in terms of the creative,” Holland told the outlet. “But I’m also a little apprehensive about it. There’s a bit of a stigma about the fourth one in all franchises. I feel like we hit a home run with our first franchise and there’s a part of me that wants to walk away with my head held high and pass the baton to the next lucky kid that gets to bring this character to life.” Sounds like perfectly good fodder for the next “Spider-Boys” text thread.
