Pop Culture

Tom Holland on Zendaya's Spidey Mask Vomit Concerns: 'It Was a Real Fear'

Holland laughs while looking back at a 2019 interview with Zendaya.

Tom Holland in a tan jacket and Zendaya in a red sweater, standing outdoors with a blurred cityscape background.
Image via Getty/Christoph Soeder/picture alliance

Life as the world’s foremost web-slinger isn’t easy.

For one, there’s the incessant villainy you’re tasked with tackling while also juggling a decidedly pedestrian private life. But a chief concern, at least for those surrounding Spider-Man, centers on the potential for vomit-induced catastrophe.

Turns out, Spidey himself has given this same concern some consideration of his own.

Speaking with Happy Sad Confused’s Josh Horowitz, Tom Holland, star of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, was reminded of a 2019 interview the host did with franchise co-stars Zendaya and Jacob Batalon. In it, Zendaya, Holland’s real-life partner, expressed awe at the actor’s ability to do much of anything while wearing the full Spidey getup, mask and all.

“Honestly, the stories I’ve heard about him having to wear that suit, I do not [envy him],” she said at the time. “You know, what I think about all the time that really scares me is when he wears that thing, the mask that you can’t just take off. … I get scared all the time, like, what if he’s working so hard that he throws up? And then, he chokes.”

Holland laughed while rewatching a clip of the 2019 interview, noting “it was a real fear” before elaborating on the Spidey suit tweaks that have made his job a bit easier in recent years.

“It was definitely something that crossed my mind,” he told Horowitz. “I think that, in reality, I knew that if that did happen, I could pull the eyes out, grab the eye tray, and I could just rip the mask off. … It's not designed that way, but I'm pretty sure I could have done that. But now in the new suit, having worked with Tobey [Maguire] and Andrew [Garfield], and seeing the amount of engineering that went into their comfortability, I have a zip at the back of my head which allows me to take the mask off to breathe.”

Brand New Day, boasting a Spidey now unburdened by fears of untimely instances of nausea, hits theaters this Friday (July 31).

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