Although the MCU has expanded the multiverse to bring back multiple Spider-Men, Shailene Woodley‘s Mary Jane Watson remains lost on the cutting room floor.
The 2x Golden Globe nominee recently recalled her performance as Mary Jane Watson being cut from 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 after filming scenes with Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker.
“Oh, we shot it. That was a fun phone call,” she said in a talk with SAG-AFTRA. “I was cast as Mary Jane for Spider-Man, which was my dream. Oh my god, Spider-Man’s my favorite superhero, Mary Jane was my favorite character growing up. So, when I got it, I was like, ‘This is so exciting!’
“And then, we filmed like three scenes together, me and Andrew Garfield. And then, like a year later, they were like, ‘So, you’re not in the movie anymore.’ And I was like, ‘What? What do you mean?’ And they’re like, ‘We’ve introduced a lot of new characters in this last one, and we’re going to wait for whatever happens between [Emma Stone] and Andrew [Garfield].’”
Woodley continued, “They were like, ‘Let’s wait for her to die, and then we’ll introduce Mary Jane.’ Which made sense, but then they didn’t make that film. So, there was no reintroduction. … That’s what I was told, but again, who knows what the truth is? I could have been terrible, and they were like, ‘We can’t do this.’”
Although Garfield’s Spider-Man teamed up with Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, he said “unequivocally fucking no” to reprising the role in Avengers: Doomsday, premiering Dec. 18 in theaters. But he hasn’t completely ruled out another movie in his Spidey continuity, which could give Woodley’s Mary Jane her long-overdue debut.
“I really love playing Spider-Man. I would love to play the character again in some capacity, but I think it would have to be very weird,” said Garfield last year. “I think I would want to do something very strange.”
