Zendaya Wanted an "MJ Pass" of the SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY Script as an Early Draft Left Out MJ's Weirdness
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the fourth film in the MCU’s Spider-Man universe. The trio of Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jacob Batalon, have starred in the franchise since it began, bringing Peter Parker, MJ, and Ned to life in a fresh and truthful way that allows viewers to believe in them and their friendship.
Brand New Day’s director, Destin Daniel Cretton, agrees as Batalon explained in an interview with EW, where he explained that the filmmaker gave the stars “space to really explore and do our own things with what we wanted.”
Zendaya has a great example of that. The actress told the outlet what her character, MJ, looked like in an early version of the script and why she wanted an “MJ pass.”
“I remember reading a draft. We wanted to mature the characters, obviously, but I remember when I read it, I was like she’s too, for lack of a better term, normal. I was like, ‘Where did all her weirdness go?’ We gotta do like an MJ pass of the script [to] weird it up a little bit and bring back some of those quirks.”
Cretton, who previously directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, agreed. “We found little moments,” she says.
One of those moments was in Zendaya’s scenes with Jon Bernthal, who plays Frank Castle/the Punisher. “There was a version where she was, not scared of him, but a little bit more, ‘Oh, this is where you live?’” Zendaya remembers. “I was like, no, MJ would be like, ‘This is how I would live.’ She’d be into him. She’d think he was really cool. So just things like that.”
Brand New Day is the first of the Holland-led Spider-Man films not directed by Jon Watts, but Zendaya commends Cretton for coming in “with such a clear vision and deep understanding of the characters already.”
“I remember my first meeting with him,” she says. “He just let me vent to him about all the things I had been dreaming about for these characters, and he was so receptive. He got, again, such a clear vision and understanding of how to make this such a human story. I think he’s most interested in the Peter Parker part of Spider-Man, and I think that is what makes this movie probably the most intimate look at Peter Parker that we’ve ever seen. It’s so personal.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in theaters this weekend.