‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Star Tom Holland Reveals the Surprisingly Gross Worst Part of Wearing His Spider-Man Suit
Playing Spider-Man comes with plenty of glamorous perks, from record-breaking box office paychecks to a devoted global fanbase that’s followed Tom Holland through nearly a decade in the role. What doesn’t often get discussed is the physically unpleasant reality of actually wearing the suit itself for hours on end.
That reality finally got some honest attention during the promotional run for ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ where Holland and his co-stars sat down with IMDb to field a round of candid questions about the production. Among the more lighthearted revelations was one detail that fans probably never considered when admiring the character’s sleek red-and-blue costume on screen.
Asked directly about the reality of wearing the Spidey suit for 12 hours a day, Holland didn’t hold back. “The worst thing is definitely the smell,” he admitted with a laugh. “You know, like, I’m not going to shy away from it. You spend 12 hours in that thing in a deep lunge, jumping up and down all day.”
That kind of physical demand lines up with just how much stunt work Holland put into this particular installment. He’s previously described the toughest sequences to film as anything involving being upside down, recalling a specific gag that got vetoed entirely by his co-stars during a game where the cast asked each other questions about the shoot, with Sadie Sink calling the attempted stunt “a mess” and Zendaya admitting it was “a big pass” for her.
Beyond the physical discomfort, Holland also opened up about the thoughtful process behind designing the suit itself. He revealed that during pre-production, he actually tried on both Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s original Spider-Man costumes alongside his own earlier suits, sitting down with the costume department and director Destin Daniel Cretton to discuss what made each previous design memorable.
“The idea behind the design of the suit was to try and make an homage to the things we loved about those original costumes,” Holland explained, connecting the new look directly back to the legacy of the actors who came before him, a fitting choice given his character’s history crossing timelines with both Maguire and Garfield in ‘No Way Home.’
Holland also noted that his two Spider-Man predecessors likely had it considerably easier logistically, given the differences in how their suits were constructed compared to what he’s had to wear for this current run of films. He didn’t go into extensive detail on the specific engineering differences, but the comment underscored just how much physical strain has gone into his version of the role over the years.
For a franchise that’s spent years turning Holland’s commitment to the physical demands of the character into its own kind of marketing moment, this latest revelation offers a genuinely unglamorous glimpse behind the curtain. Between the smell, the stunts, and the hours spent in a deep lunge, it’s clear that looking effortless on screen requires anything but behind the scenes.
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