Andrew Garfield on Sneaking Into Spider-Man Screening With Tobey Maguire: “It Was Surreal”

Andrew Garfield dishes on the “surreal” experience of sneaking into a Spider-Man screening with his No Way Home co-star Tobey Maguire. Joining their Spider-Man successor Tom Holland in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the multiversal crossover in No Way Home is Garfield’s first time reprising the role since 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Maguire’s first since 2007’s Spider-Man 3. In a new interview with SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show, Garfield reveals how the Spider-Man stars kept their identities secret while watching an opening night showing of the Marvel movie with a packed audience. 

“If Tobey and I just kind of put on a baseball cap and wear our Covid N95 masks, we just look like a couple of white guys and that’s kind of that. We’re just two other white guys who like Spider-Man, and we go and we get our popcorn, and we hang,” Garfield said. “It was really that simple. There was no moment where we felt like we were gonna get mobbed. It was really fun, it was a sweet little private hang we had. It was surreal.”

Garfield and Maguire kept the secret hangout under wraps until after the showing of No Way Home. The Spider-Men later posed for pictures and were spotted with their “disguises” in a viral photo published on Twitter. 

“I had never seen the film before. [Spider-Man producers] Amy [Pascal] and Kevin Feige had set up a screening for us that I wasn’t able to go to because I was shooting,” Garfield said. “Tobey had already seen it, but I hadn’t seen it. I was seeing it for the first time with him and with an audience. It was one of those moments that you’ll never forget.” 

In a previous interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Garfield said denying and lying about the Spider-Men’s returns was “the right thing to do.” 

“Even with the people I think were pretty sure it was going to happen, I’m sure there was a little scintilla of doubt as they were walking in to see Spider-Man: No Way Home which allowed them to release and say, ‘Yes, it happened,’” Garfield said of the long-rumored returns of the Spider-Man and Amazing Spider-Man stars. “I think it was the absolute right thing to do. It gave me fun things to talk about and deny and talk about Photoshop, even when it was clearly me on set for Spider-Man wearing a Spider-Man [suit] (laughs). I loved that.”  

 Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing exclusively in theaters and will soon be available to own on digital.