One Tip From Jon Bernthal Helped Tom Holland Land the Spider-Man Role

Jon Bernthal deserves at least a little credit for bringing Tom Holland into the MCU. In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel last week, Bernthal revealed that he was working with Holland on a different movie in 2015 while they were both auditioning for Marvel Studios roles — he for Punisher and Holland for Spider-Man. The two even made their audition tapes together, and he advised Holland to show off his athletic abilities to stand out from the other candidates. Bernthal modestly said this may have contributed to Holland’s casting, though he admits he had his doubts about the competitive audition at the time.

“Tom Holland is one of the greatest human beings that every lived, let me just start by saying that,” Bernthal started, to agreeable applause from the audience. “Tom Holland — I cannot say enough good about this young man. I love him. We did a film about seven or eight years ago that was sort of like The Odyssey, it was a medieval journey film, but it was made for about 1 billionth of the budget. Like, literally.”

It seems like Bernthal was probably talking about the movie Pilgrimage, which actually came out in 2017 after both he and Holland had made their MCU debuts. That movie filmed in the spring of 2015, which didn’t leave much time for Holland to film Captain America: Civil War and for Bernthal to film Daredevil Season 2. Both came out in 2016. Their paths have never crossed in the MCU, but the two actors are now working together again on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

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“That was where both Tom and I did his audition for Spider-Man and I did my audition for Punisher. We actually made each other’s audition tapes on that film,” he explained. “He was a teenager, but I had never seen — I mean, he had such focus, and such belief, it was so beautiful. He would say, like, ‘I’m Spider-Man.’ He really believed he was going to get it, and I was like, ‘There’s probably a lot of people that want to be Spider-Man. I mean, you’re super talented and all, but the odds are kind of against you.’ …So Tom just had this belief, and when you get to know him, and you see how he shows up, there is a reason why he is the movie star that he is.”

“The thing is, he’s also just this insanely good athlete, and all the flips and that — he can do all that stuff for real,” Bernthal went on. “I will take credit that in his audition tape, he did this thing where he sort of slided [sic] into the scene, and I gave him the note, ‘Tom, you know, maybe you should run up that wall and do like a double backflip, and then start the scene.’ He was like, ‘Yeah? You think I should do that? That’s not too much?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think any of these other fools are able to do that!’ And he in fact did that!

Bernthal was coy about giving himself any credit for Holland’s casting. “So it’s not like I take responsibility for him, but, you know, like, a little, right?” he said with raised eyebrows and a sly smile. “A little something?”

Bernthal just made a triumphant return to the MCU in Daredevil: Born Again, which just wrapped up its first season on Disney+. Another season is expected in the first half of 2026. Holland’s future in the MCU is mysterious and exciting, but we know at least we’ll see him in Spider-Man: Brand New Day next year. The Odyssey is filming now with a target release date of July 17th, 2026.