Kirsten Dunst reveals why she wasn’t asked to return for ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

For many fans, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ (2021) was a dream come true. Seeing the three famous Spider-Man actors together: Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland in the same feature film was a gift from heaven. However, some key characters from previous timelines fell by the wayside and this was the case for Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson, who revealed in an interview that she was not asked to return for ‘No Way Home’.

Kirsten Dunst on ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Kirsten Dunst confirmed that neither Sony nor Marvel Studios asked her to return for ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ (2021) despite Tobey Maguire featuring in the film with Dunst adding that: “I wasn’t asked, but I would have accepted”.

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Dunst also mentioned in the interview that she would like to revisit the relationship between Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker and her Mary Jane character. “I think it would be fun for Tobey and I to meet again but in an indie movie style, with a superhero movie tone completely different. Something like what they did in ‘Chronicle’, that would be cool,” she added.

Mary Jane was Peter Parker’s love interest since they were children in Raimi’s ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy. Although Kirsten Dunst’s character is not a part of the narrative for ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’, it is seen by many as something of a wasted opportunity, since her mere appearance would have served to establish parallels between the relationships. Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker and his MJ and Tom Holland’s Peter Parker with his respective MJ (Zendaya).

At least, I would have been curious to see how the characters interact with each other, especially considering that Maguire and Dunst’s characters’ romantic relationship is much more advanced and mature than that of Holland’s Peter and Zendaya’s MJ.

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The actress maintains that she does not hold “resentment” for the decision not to be included for the third ‘Spider-Man’ film from the Marvel Universe.

Dunst’s recent film projects

The most recent feature film from the 41-year-old is ‘Civil War’ (2024) directed by Alex Garland, a film that tells the story of a group of reporters who travel through a dystopian United States that has entered a new civil war.

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The film stars Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Nick Offerman and will be on general release date from 12 April, 2024 in the United Kingdom and the United States with other international release dates yet to be confirmed with early reviews extremely positive with one claiming that the movie is “the ‘Apocalypse Now’ of this century”.