Zendaya Wasn’t Happy with How ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Changed MJ — So She Demanded a “Weirdness Pass”

Zendaya had one big problem with an early version of MJ in Spider-Man: Brand New Day: the character felt too normal.

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Zendaya explained that she wanted MJ to keep the strange, funny, and slightly unpredictable personality fans have come to know. After reading an early draft of the script, she felt something important was missing from the character.

“We wanted to mature the characters, obviously, but I remember when I read it, I was like she’s too, for lack of a better term, normal,” Zendaya said. “Where did all her weirdness go?”

That reaction led to what Zendaya jokingly called an “MJ pass” on the script. She wanted to bring back some of MJ’s quirks and make sure the character still felt like the same person audiences had watched in the earlier Spider-Man movies.

Zendaya said she talked with director Destin Daniel Cretton about the issue, and he was open to making changes. “We found little moments,” she explained.

Those small changes apparently helped shape MJ’s personality throughout the movie. One example came from a scene involving Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher.

Zendaya explained that an early version of the scene had MJ reacting to Castle’s world with a little more caution. But she felt that wasn’t quite right for MJ. Instead of being intimidated by him, Zendaya thought her character would probably find him fascinating.

“There was a version where she was, not scared of him, but a little bit more, ‘Oh, this is where you live?’” Zendaya recalled. “I was like, no, MJ would be like, ‘This is how I would live.’ She’d be into him. She’d think he was really cool.”

It was exactly the kind of detail Zendaya felt could make MJ feel more authentic. Rather than changing the character completely, the goal was to make sure the new version still had the oddball charm that helped make her popular in the first place.

The changes also seem to fit Cretton’s overall approach to Brand New Day. According to Zendaya, the director gave the cast room to explore their characters and bring their own ideas to the story.

Zendaya praised Cretton for arriving with a strong understanding of Peter Parker, MJ, and the emotional history between them. She said that during their first meeting, she was able to openly talk about the things she had imagined for the characters, and Cretton was receptive to those ideas.

The actress believes that focus helped make Brand New Day more personal than previous Spider-Man movies. “I think he’s most interested in the Peter Parker part of Spider-Man,” she said. “I think that is what makes this movie probably the most intimate look at Peter Parker that we’ve ever seen. It’s so personal.”

The new movie follows Peter after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home, when the world forgets who he is. While Peter continues fighting crime, he has to watch MJ and Ned build lives without remembering him.

For Zendaya, keeping MJ’s weirdness alive appears to have been just as important as exploring how much the character has changed. And judging from her comments, Brand New Day found a way to let MJ grow up without taking away the personality that made fans love her.

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