Fourteen years later, Jamie Bell has made peace with the fact that he lost out on the role of Peter Parker in director Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man to Andrew Garfield.
The two actors addressed the Marvel casting during a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen (watch below) to promote their Robin Hood-coded film, The Uprising.
Jamie Bell On Losing The Amazing Spider-Man Role To Andrew Garfield
“They clearly chose the right guy,” Bell said as Garfield humbly downplayed the compliment. “He’s a phenomenal actor.”
Nevertheless, the decision apparently came down to the wire, with Bell remembering how he and Garfield attended a dinner together while the final deliberations were taking place.
“I think it was pretty obvious who it was gonna be,” he recalled. “There was a big table with a lot of people. A salt shaker fell off the table and both me and Andrew reached for it. Everyone was like, ‘Oh! Spidey-Senses!'”
Bell elaborated on the process in a 2011 interview with Vulture (via ComicBookMovie), stating, “We did a bunch of scenes with Marc, and I was one of many people who did it. It was a great experience, a great opportunity.”
“The truth is, if you’re [Sony chief] Amy Pascal, I think you just go, ‘God, Andrew’s a great actor,'” he continued. “That was a no-brainer, and I think it was a really great piece of casting, to be honest. Marc was a great director in the small time I got to work with him, so I think it’ll be fantastic.”
Other actors up for the part included Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games), Frank Dillane (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story).
Garfield played Peter Parker in two Amazing Spider-Man movies (both directed by Webb), which both grossed over $700 million at the worldwide box office. He returned in Jon Watts’s 2021 Spider-Man: No Way Home, coming face-to-face with Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire.
Garfield has denied rumors that his variant of the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler will return in Avengers: Doomsday. But, to be fair, he did the same thing ahead of No Way Home, so anything is possible. Especially when the multiverse is involved.
The Uprising is now in theaters. Click here for tickets.
