If there’s one thing about the MCU that seems to be universally true, it is that everyone loves Robert Downey, Jr. There are a couple obvious reasons to love him. First, he did literally help usher in the entire MCU era and his character was vital to the early days of the franchise/universe. But the better reason is that he seems to be a cool guy to work with on-set and hang out with in general. Tom Holland is the latest person to sing his praises. In a recent interview with the Rich Roll podcast, Holland said that Robert Downey Jr. saved his very first MCU Spider-Man scene in Captain America: Civil War by standing up for him. (Thanks to Deadline for bringing this to our attention.)
“When I did my audition, my audition was like eight pages of dialogue. It was a long scene,” he revealed. “Typically, an audition will be two pages.” But he got to set on the first day and realized that his scene was very different from what he read for because of big cuts. As a newbie, Holland was ready to go with the flow but Downey, Jr. had some questions for the Russo Brothers.
“We start shooting the scene, and Downey piped up and said, ‘Where’s all the kid’s line gone?’” said Holland. “And the Russos sort of said, ‘Well look, this is already a 140-page script. We can’t spend too much time on this.’ And Downey was the one that was like, ‘No, no, no, you’re going to want to spend some time on this. Let’s shoot the whole thing from the audition. You can always cut it, but you’d want to have it.’ And they used all of it. So, I owe that to him.”
Tom Holland hopes to one day return Robert Downey, Jr.’s kindness of saving his first MCU scene to someone new one day. We love to see it.
