Hollywood superstar and current Spider-Man Tom Holland said he had trouble portraying Nathan Drake in upcoming blockbuster Uncharted, because the character was a lot cooler than he’s used to.
Holland, who put on 18 pounds of muscle to play Drake, said he would play the Uncharted video games in his Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer, but he never imagined that he’d actually portray the lead. The star also considers himself an introvert, so playing someone like Drake was a challenge, as he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“One of the most difficult things about this character was playing “the cool guy.” Historically, I’ve always sort of played the outsider who doesn’t particularly have many friends and isn’t the cool kid. So Nathan Drake is the complete opposite, and that was something that took me a while to get used to and feel comfortable doing.”
He also said one of the reasons he wanted to bulk up was because of how big Mark Wahlberg was as his onscreen mentor Sully.
“To be honest, mate, it was all that. We were about to start shooting the film, and I realized that Mark was so much bigger than me. And then we shut down because of COVID; we had a five-month hiatus. And in that hiatus, I did nothing but train and train and train and train. So I’m glad I did because I think it would have looked slightly odd. I would have looked like one of his biceps.”
One of the hardest things about playing Spidey and Drake, Holland said, was the physicality difference between the two. He filmed them almost at the same time so there were some issues with that, and he even had to cut some weight to suit up as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s web-slinger after his Uncharted bulk up.
“Yeah, as soon as I got to Atlanta, we started a pretty intense cut. On Uncharted, I was probably 74 kilograms [163 pounds] and then I cut down to 66 [145 pounds] or 67 kilograms [147 pounds] for Spider-Man. I need to be so agile when playing that character and carrying that weight would’ve been really, really difficult. So yeah, the cut was pretty severe.”
We’ll find out if Holland’s intense training and personal sacrifices were worth it when Uncharted releases in theaters on February 18.