Spider-Man star Tom Holland is slimming down for R-rated drama Cherry, where he reunites with Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo.
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“That’s a film where I’m gonna get to explore emotions and stuff that I’ve never experienced before in life. I’m trying to lose weight and get really, really skinny,” Holland said at Keystone Comic Con in Philadelphia Sunday. “It isn’t working, because I love pizza [laughs]. No, I will get there, I will get there. I’ve got six weeks, I’m booked in a bootcamp. But I’ve been running a lot recently, which is something I never do, and I’ve been training really hard and trying to get skinny.”
The 23-year-old star already comes from a gymnastics and dancing background, but his new regimen gave him a scare when he “was walking to the train station and just fell over.”
“I just had a moment, I don’t know what happened to me, I just was on the floor,” Holland said. “I think I must have broken something in my foot. It might not look like it, but I feel like I need to go to the hospital, probably.”
In Cherry, Holland plays an opioid-addicted former Army medic who goes on a bank robbing spree to fuel his worsening addiction. The film is inspired by a true story and based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by first time author Nico Walker.
Holland added he’s “super excited about this project.”
“Working with the Russos, they’re the kind of guys where they can be like, ‘Do you want to…?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll sign up. Whatever you’re doing, I’ll do it with you,’” Holland said. “And the role, for me, is like the greatest role that’s ever come my way, from an acting point of view. Like there’s so much for me to do in one film. I’m just really excited to try and play these kind of different characters, and explore stuff I’ve never done before.”
Expanding on the project during a visit to San Diego Comic-Con, Joe Russo said the “deeply personal” Cherry is “a story very near and dear to us” as natives of Cleveland, Ohio.
“A lot of the locations in the book are locations that we grew up in and around. The author of the book actually worked at the same restaurant I worked at a few years after I worked there,” Joe said. “This is a story about drug addiction and the opioid crisis, told in a very fascinating and frank way. It’s touched us both, it’s touched our families, the crisis, and so this is a very deeply personal movie for us. The gentleman who wrote the book was someone who went through the same growth arc that we did in the same part of the city that we grew up in, and had a very different experience, and we want to tell his story.”
