Marvel's What If...? New Spider-Man Breaks Silence on Landing Tom Holland's Role

09/20/2021 08:54 pm EDT

While Marvel's What If...? takes place within the ever-expanding multiverse of the MCU, not all of the actors that play the heroes in the live-action films returned for the series. In addition to Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans sitting the animated anthology out, Tom Holland was also unable to return for the project. The Peter Parker featured in What If...? is actually voiced by Hudson Thames, who has become one of the most popular replacement voices amongst Marvel fans.

Thames has been quiet on his new Marvel role since the "Zombies?!" episode featuring Zombie Hunter Spider-Man was released on Disney+. This week, however, Thames spoke with The Direct about how he ended up voicing the iconic web-slinger for What If...?.

"It was honestly a pretty standard procedure in terms of arriving at the role," Thames said. "I got called for this audition, and I wasn't told anything about it. It wasn't for Spider-Man. It was for something that doesn't exist. It's funny, they walked me through at Disney, all the underground secret tunnels or whatever. I was a super, super, super on the low situation. I went and read a bunch of dialogue. Got a call a week later and said we are going to this thing. I signed a bunch of papers saying I wasn't going to talk about it. And then we did the dang thing."

Getting to put your own stamp on a character as important and beloved as Spider-Man is obviously an exciting thing, but one of the things that Thames was most pumped about was getting to talk about Uncle Ben. Peter Parker's late uncle was pivotal to his origin story as a superhero, but the MCU version of the character mostly skipped over that part of the tale since Spider-Man already had his powers when he met Tony Stark. Thames had the opportunity to change that with his episode of the animated series.

"It was really special," Thames said of the Uncle Ben conversation in What If...?. "It was really cool to talk about Uncle Ben for the first time which I knew was a really big thing for people. And yeah, it was really cool. Really special."

What did you think about Thames' take on Spider-Man in Marvel's What If...? Let us know in the comments!

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