Shailene Woodley Reflects on Cut Mary Jane Role in The Amazing Spider-Man 2
You may recall that Shailene Woodley was cast as Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The Divergent and Big Little Lies actor shot her scenes opposite Andrew Garfield’s wall-crawler for what she now calls her “dream” role in the Marvel-Sony sequel, only to later find out she had been cut from the movie entirely before it hit theaters in 2014.
In a recent chat with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Conversations (via The Hollywood Reporter), Woodley recalled her disappointment when she learned a year after she’d shot her scenes that she had been cut from Amazing Spider-Man 2.
“I was cast as Mary Jane for Spider-Man, which was my dream. 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!'” Woodley said.
“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.’ And I was like, ‘What? What do you mean?’ And they’re like, ‘We’ve introduced a lot of new characters in this last one, and we’re going to wait for whatever happens between [Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy] and Andrew [Garfield].'”
“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. So, there was no reintroduction,” Woodley said. “That’s what I was told, but again, who knows what the truth is? I could have been terrible, and they were like, ‘We can’t do this.'”
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ends with the death of Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy, and the filmmakers said at the time that was one reason they cut Woodley’s Mary Jane from the movie.
“Shailene is a brilliant actress, and she did a great couple days of work,” director Marc Webb said. “But it was very difficult to introduce someone as a competing love interest when so much is on the table with Peter and Gwen.”
“We bit off more than we can chew,” said producer Matt Tolmach. “We had a superhero opera, and as great as Shailene is, she didn’t really co-exist with the bigger story we were telling.
"You can’t have Peter thinking about Gwen every moment, and then there’s this girl next door who’s suddenly there. We weren’t ready for it.”
Any chance of Woodley reprising her role as Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 never came to pass. Sony Pictures and Marvel rebooted the franchise instead with Tom Holland as the new Spidey and Zendaya as the MCU’s version of MJ. Sony then produced a series of increasingly unsuccessful Spidey villain spin-offs, but the studio recently shelved plans for any more of those.
Andrew Garfield eventually reprised his role as Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the MCU’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Garfield recently said he’s open to making The Amazing Spider-Man 3, but said, “I would need it to be very, very odd.”