The Spider-Man franchise was a huge part of actor Kirsten Dunst’s life and career. But filming the iconic superhero series wasn’t always a good time for the superstar.
Kirsten Dunst had no problem telling ‘Spider-Man’ producers she hated doing certain scenes
Dunst was already an established actor by the time she brought Mary Jane Watson to the big screen. It was a part she was initially attracted to because of the depth she saw in the role. But Dunst wanted to add even more depth, and made it clear to director Sam Raimi that she wasn’t going to be solely a victim to be saved.
“’I just don’t want to be the damsel in distress. I’ll scream on the balcony, but you’ve got to let me do a little action here,’” she remembered telling Raimi in a resurfaced interview with CNN.
But even after clinching the feature, there were certain physical scenes that Dunst didn’t take a liking to. So she simply refused to do them no matter how much she was pressured into changing her mind.
“I’ve always said ‘no.’ Like, it’s my life, you know? I remember once with Spider-Man, they kept at me with this one stunt where they strung me to the top of the ceiling and basically I bungee jumped,” Dunst once said according to Cinemablend. “I didn’t really want to do it, and when I tried it I said, ‘Well, you should’ve shot that because I’m never doing it again. You’ll have to find another way’. It was terrifying, I hated it – so you should’ve shot that because I will never do it again.”
Kirsten Dunst came home ‘depressed’ from working on ‘Spider-Man 3’
Dunst isn’t a fan of doing action scenes. But perhaps what she can’t stand more than doing certain stunts is doing nothing at all while on set. There was a lot of that for Dunst in Spider-Man 3, which bored the actor out of her mind.
“As it came to the end of our film, it was like this three-week period of sitting in the trailer, just zoned out on MTV,” she once said in an interview with MTV News. “It was like [My Super] Sweet 16; I was dying in my trailer. Occasionally, we’d do a shot and it [lasts] the blink of an eye in the film. It’s really arduous and depressing.”
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Fortunately, Dunst had a friend in the entertainment industry who had similar feelings towards their job at the time. Dunst and her friend were able to vent about their work experiences together.
“I actually remember my best friend was living with me — she works for MTV; she casts reality shows for you guys. She’d come home super-bored, depressed from her job, and I’d come home depressed from mine. We’d drink pinot grigio and watch American Idol and be like, ‘I hate our lives!’ For three weeks, we had the worst time,” she said.
Kirsten Dunst would’ve loved to make another ‘Spider-Man’ movie
Dunst has been immortalized as a permanent part of Spider-Man mythology. Still, it’s been a while since she’s portrayed her live action Mary Jane Watson in any Spider-Man movies. The franchise has since moved on to include a new generation of actors that has featured the likes of Zendaya and Tom Holland. When asked about her thoughts about the new Spider-Man films, however, Dunst didn’t mince words.
“I don’t care,” she said in a 2017 Variety interview. “Everyone likes our Spider-Man. C’mon, am I right or what? Listen, I’d rather be in the first ones than the new ones.”
If she had one major regret about her own franchise, it was that she didn’t continue her story where it was left off in Spider-Man 3.
“I wanted to be in that movie so badly,” Dunst said. “I loved it, and I wish we could have made a fourth.”
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