Andrew Garfield is standing firmly by remarks he first made more than a decade ago about the possibility of a gay Spider-Man.
Telling Entertainment Weekly that his position hasn’t changed while promoting his new historical drama, The Uprising.
Asked to revisit comments he originally made in a 2013 interview with the same outlet while promoting The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Garfield confirmed his stance hasn’t wavered.
Back in 2013, Garfield had floated the idea directly, recalling a conversation with a producer about the character of MJ: “I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking about MJ… I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!… So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?”
He even suggested Michael B. Jordan for a potential male love interest at the time, saying he’d been “obsessed with him since The Wire.”
Revisiting the topic now, Garfield described his original comments as “an exercise in rebellion that I felt passionate about,” and reaffirmed his underlying belief about the character’s universal appeal.
“I just still believe that anyone can be in that suit. That’s the point of why it’s such a kind of universally beloved character, one of the greatly beloved characters in the history of fiction, is because you don’t see skin colour, you don’t see gender, you don’t see sexuality. Anyone can project themselves into that suit.”
He added a pointed remark aimed at anyone reacting strongly either way, “You’ll be telling on yourself if you have a strong opinion either way.”
Garfield has previously said he faced pressure to walk back his 2013 remarks, telling The Independent in 2021 that he’d been asked to apologise for expressing “a legitimate thing to think and feel,” and had pushed back on that request at the time.
