Tom Holland is best known for playing Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the actor’s latest movie is a definite departure from the comic book world. Cherry is now playing in theatres and follows “an Army medic suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder” who “becomes a serial bank robber after an addiction to drugs puts him in debt.” The movie was helmed by Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo who used Holland in a brand new way. While speaking with Yahoo! Entertainment, Holland explained what was so freeing about stepping into the role.
“It’s very freeing to be able to play a character with no boundaries, there was no limit to how far we could go in bringing these characters to life,” Holland shared. “When you’re making a Spider-Man movie, there is an audience that you have to cater to, and there’s only so far that you can push these characters into deeper and darker places.”
“When it came to the emotional aspect of making this film, there were no easy days, there were no light days,” Holland added. “Especially when we were going through the dope life portion of the film. It required Ciara [Bravo] and I to kind of push ourselves to emotional places that I didn’t really know I had in me at times.” He continues, “I remember doing a few scenes and them calling, ‘Cut!’ and being like, ‘I didn’t know I had that in me.'”
Holland revealed in an Actors on Actors talk for Variety that the Russos approached him about Cherry while polishing some dialogue recordings for Avengers Endgame.
“I was doing ADR for Avengers: Endgame, and at the end of the session they sort of took me aside and said, ‘We want to make this movie. It’s about a kid who suffers from PTSD and falls into drug addiction and ends up robbing banks. Would you be interested?'” Holland said. “When they offered me the job, I was just really excited. And then when I read the script for the first time, I was like, ‘There’s no way I can make this film. I’ll fall apart. I can’t hold onto a character like this for so long.’ It was all about preparation, and really setting out the character beats and figuring out how I was going to get from A to B in each section. The hardest part was trying to merge the sections because the character changes so much throughout the film.”
Cherry is now playing in theatres and will be available to watch on Apple TV+ on March 12th.