In many ways, Spider-Man: No Way Home was a love letter to Spider-Man films of yore, with both Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield returning to join Tom Holland on screen. And the returns weren’t limited to Peter Parkers; Alfred Molina, Willem Dafoe, and Jamie Foxx all returned to reprise their villain roles from previous Spidey films as well.
But one big name that didn’t come back for the 2021 MCU hit was Kirsten Dunst, who famously played MJ in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, starring alongside Maguire in all three movies. And it’s not because she wasn’t down for it.
In a recent, wide-ranging interview with GQ, Dunst revealed that she would’ve been happy to reprise the character – if someone had asked.
“No, no,” Dunst said, responding to whether or not anyone asked her to appear in No Way Home. “I would have.”
The article adds that she hasn’t seen No Way Home, so she isn’t sure how it would’ve handled the MJ/Peter Parker dynamic with her and Maguire, but she has a vague idea on how she’d like to revisit that relationship.
“It would be funny to be like, OK, let’s take Tobey [Maguire] and I and do it in a weird indie way where it’s like a different kind of superhero film,” she told the outlet. “Like how they did that movie Chronicle. It could be cool.”
Chronicle came out in 2012 and, as Dunst mentions, offered a unique take on the superhero genre just as the MCU was ramping up. A found-footage thriller that starred Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan as three high schoolers who suddenly get superpowers, the film grossed an impressive $126 million worldwide on a tight $15 million budget.
Dunst has been refreshingly honest as of late when it comes to her time in superhero movies, opening up about, among other things, how “miserable” it was to film that legendary kiss with Maguire in 2002’s Spider-Man. Still, in her interview with GQ, Dunst mentioned a certain purity that came with making a superhero movie back in the early aughts.
“It was more innocent, I think,” she says. “Sam Raimi was like a cult director, so it felt like we were making an indie disguised as a superhero film.”
For more related to the 2002-2007 Spider-Man trilogy, check out Raimi’s recent comments addressing the rumors that he’s working with Spider-Man 4 with Maguire.
Thumbnail credit: Columbia Pictures/Getty Images
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
