More than 12 years after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hit theaters, Shailene Woodley is opening up about a role she never got to see through. The actress was cast as Mary Jane Watson opposite Andrew Garfield‘s Peter Parker, only for every one of her scenes to be cut from the final film.
Woodley addressed the experience during a recent SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations interview, revealing that landing the part felt like a dream come true, given her lifelong connection to the character and the franchise.
“I was cast as Mary Jane for Spider-Man, which was my dream because I really, 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.'”
She went on to describe filming with Garfield, only to learn much later that none of it would make the movie.
“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. We’ve introduced a lot of new characters in this last one, and we’re going to wait for whatever happens between Emma and Andrew.’
“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.”
At the film’s 2014 premiere, producer Matt Tolmach told Variety the production had simply taken on more story than the movie could hold, with the script ballooning to 148 pages before the Mary Jane arc was cut loose.
The plan had been to properly introduce Woodley’s Mary Jane in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, following Gwen Stacy’s death in the second film, but Sony never made that sequel.
Kirsten Dunst previously played Mary Jane opposite Tobey Maguire in Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man trilogy. Woodley’s version of the character remains unseen, still sitting somewhere in Sony’s vault more than a decade later.
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