Tom Hiddleston Jokes About His 15 Years of Keeping Marvel Secrets While Discussing His Toughest Movie Yet
After 15 years of playing Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tom Hiddleston has gotten pretty good at keeping his mouth shut about Marvel's biggest secrets. With Avengers: Doomsday on the horizon, the actor knows exactly how to dodge questions about what's coming. Apparently, keeping spoilers under wraps is a skill he's mastered.
Hiddleston recently joked about his experience protecting Marvel secrets while discussing his Apple TV movie Tenzing, which follows the historic first successful climb to the summit of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
Speaking with GamesRadar+, Hiddleston was asked how the intense physical preparation for Tenzing compared to keeping secrets about Avengers: Doomsday. His response was pretty amusing.
"Well, I've been keeping my Marvel secrets close to my chest for a while now, so that muscle is practiced. This was all new for me."
While keeping Marvel spoilers under control has become second nature, preparing to play legendary mountaineer Edmund Hillary was an entirely different challenge.
Hiddleston stars alongside Genden Phuntsok, who plays Tenzing Norgay, and the two actors went through extensive physical training to make their performances as authentic as possible. That meant learning actual mountaineering skills and spending time climbing real mountains.
Hiddleston explained how seriously he took the preparation, saying: "I thought, 'Okay, I've got to get fit and strong,' and so I made sure to try and build a true fitness.
“I did lots of running before I started and strength and conditioning work, and then when I got to the mountains, lots of time with the mountain team and with the stunt team, learning how to do the things that Hillary knew how to do."
The actors even made a climb toward Everest base camp as part of their preparation. For Hiddleston, getting the details right was especially important because he knew experienced climbers would be watching. "We wanted mountaineers to watch this film and go, 'Yeah, okay, they know what they're doing,'" he explains.
Phuntsok was already accustomed to living at high elevations, but the technical side of mountaineering presented challenges he hadn't experienced before.
"I'm living in high plateau, so this is not really hard for me, but of course compared with a really professional mountaineer, of course, it's really challenging for me," he tells us. "Especially, we have to learn and train how to climb ice, snow, and rock, and everything is new knowledge for me."
One of the most demanding moments involved a scene where Tenzing climbs out of a 30-foot icy crevasse. Rather than relying entirely on movie magic, Phuntsok actually performed the climb himself.
Hiddleston recalled watching his co-star tackle the intimidating sequence. "This is one of the first things we did in the mountains," Hiddleston explains. "They said, 'Genden, it's time to go into the crevasse and climb out the other side,' and the rest of us simply watched Genden climb a wall of ice."
That sounds like a pretty awesome day at work! Phuntsok admitted that looking down midway through the climb made him realize just how dangerous the situation was. He remembered thinking, "Oh my God, I don't believe this."
The experience also gave him a greater appreciation for what the real explorers accomplished. "I can imagine at that time Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary and the team must have beat so many things like this."
It's cool to see Hiddleston and Phuntsok putting in this kind of effort to bring the story to life. Their commitment to learning real climbing techniques should make Tenzing a more convincing look at one of history's greatest mountaineering achievements.
As for Loki's role in Avengers: Doomsday, Hiddleston obviously isn't giving anything away. Fifteen years of Marvel secrecy have prepared him well for that particular challenge.
Climbing a mountain, however, might actually be easier than getting this guy to reveal an MCU spoiler.