Cherry: Tom Holland Reveals How the Russo Brothers Pitched the Movie to Him

The upcoming Cherry will mark not only the reunion of Spider-Man star Tom Holland with Avengers: Endgame director Joe and Anthony Russo, but actually came together while they were finishing off the 2019 Marvel Studios movie. Though the trailer tries to lure you in by selling the Russo’s names and Holland’s comedic timing, the subject matter couldn’t be more different from their Marvel features. Holland revealed in an Actors on Actors talk for Variety that the pair approached him about it while polishing off dialogue recordings for Endgame and that it was his first project after finishing the movie.

“I was doing ADR for Avengers: Endgame, and at the end of the session they sort of took me aside and said, ‘We want to make this movie. It’s about a kid who suffers from PTSD and falls into drug addiction and ends up robbing banks. Would you be interested?’” Holland said. “When they offered me the job, I was just really excited. And then when I read the script for the first time, I was like, ‘There’s no way I can make this film. I’ll fall apart. I can’t hold onto a character like this for so long.’ It was all about preparation, and really setting out the character beats and figuring out how I was going to get from A to B in each section. The hardest part was trying to merge the sections, because the character changes so much throughout the film.”

Holland went on to describe injuring himself for one sequence in the movie and sadly how the proof of that pain won’t be on the screen.

“I beat the crap out of my leg with that needle, which broke every time. It wasn’t a real needle — it would retract — but I was always worried that one time it wouldn’t and I would just stab myself in the leg. I bust my nose up really bad on the steering wheel, and I had a really bad bloody nose, but you can’t see it on camera, which really annoys me.”

Cherry is based on the novel of the same name and the true story of it’s author, Nico Walker, who suffered from undiagnosed PTSD after returning home from a military stint in Iraq. He eventually fell into an opioid addiction and started robbing banks. Walker was arrested and convicted in 2011 and was released in 2019.

Holland stars in the film as Walker, and he’s joined in the cast by Ciara Bravo, Jack Reynor, Kelli Berglund, Thomas Lennon, Adam Long, Jeff Wahlberg, Michael Gandolfini, and Pooch Hall.

Cherry hits theaters on February 26th. It will then be available to stream on will come Apple TV+, starting on March 12th.