Tom Holland Recalls Getting Spider-Man Producers in Trouble With His Mother

Tom Holland recalls the “mortifying” moment his mother came to his rescue during the making of 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. In a new interview for Spider-Man: No Way Home, the 25-year-old actor says the practical Spider-Man suit used for the first movie made it difficult to go to the toilet on breaks from filming. Speaking to Jeremy Lynch on YouTube, Holland says he inadvertently got Spider-Man producers in hot water when he phoned a complaint to his mother, photographer Nikki Holland, about a lack of bathroom breaks. 

“[The urge to go to the bathroom while wearing the suit] happens all the time. On the first film, I remember we did a sequence on the Washington Monument and I had to climb up and down it for like weeks on end. And basically, I didn’t go to the toilet for like 11 hours or something, and I was desperate,” Holland said. “When you wear the harness under the suit – obviously you can’t put it over the top because you’ll see it, and because the suit is so tight you have to cinch the harness up from the get-go – it means going to the bathroom is a mission. I remember, I called my mom up, and I was like, ‘I’ve had a really hard day, I need to go to the toilet. I haven’t been to the toilet for 11 hours.’”

“Two or three days later,” Holland recalled, “the producers took me aside, and they were like, ‘How are your kidneys? Your mum’s called us and told us to give you adequate toilet breaks.’”

At the time 20 years old, Holland said he remembers “being mortified” but “also so grateful because I really needed to go to the bathroom and I was too scared to disrupt filming (laughs).” But after playing Spider-Man across six movies, including two Avengers movies, Holland added with a laugh, “Now I’m like, ‘I’m doing a sh-t! Leave me alone!’”  

In 2017, Holland said that wearing the “uncomfortable” skin-tight suit is “not the greatest thing” — but it’s worth it to play Spider-Man. 

“You just have to remind yourself of the long list of actors that would love to be in that suit, and you just go, ‘Do you know what, f—k it. I’m the luckiest kid alive,’” he said of suiting up as Spider-Man for his first standalone film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Holland’s Peter Parker gets multiple new suits in Spider-Man: No Way Home, now playing exclusively in movie theaters.