The following post contains SPOILERS for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Andrew Garfield, you owe us all an apology.

Or maybe we owe him an apology. For the past year, Andrew Garfield has been forced, in interview after interview after interview, to answer questions about the new Spider-Man movie. Since the moment the film was announced, rumors began ping-ponging around the internet that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would reprise their roles as the previous cinematic Peter Parkers in the film.

From the very beginning, Garfield was adamant: He was not in the movie, he knew nothing about it, his time as Spider-Man had come and gone. Still, people kept asking; on podcasts, on talk shows, in print. Garfield’s answer never changed. He wasn’t in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Okay, so obviously he was lying.

Garfield is in the film as Spider-Man. He’s really good, too. His performance as Peter Parker is almost as convincing as all those interviews where he swore up and down he wasn’t in the movie. What was the poor guy supposed to do? Say “yes, you’re right! I am in it!”? People would have been furious if he ruined the surprise. Here, now, is the complete list of all the interviews where Garfield fibbed about this movie for the sake of maintaining one of the worst-kept secrets in recent Hollywood history.

May 2021:

Way back in May, Josh Horowitz asked Garfield point blank on his Happy Sad Confused podcast whether he would show up in No Way Home. Garfield stuttered and tripped over his words a little bit, but after Horowitz pressed for a definitive answer, Garfield gave one. “I ain’t got a call,” he joked, then added, “I did not get a call. Listen, I would've gotten a call by now. That's what I'll say. I don't want to rule anything out. Maybe they want to call me. Maybe they want to call me and say, 'Hey, people want this.’”

Now I guess in a court of law, Garfield could claim that he really never got a call — maybe the whole deal was set up over emails or text messages to technically he never did get a call. But clearly there was some deceit going on here.

September 2021

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Garfield remained quiet through the rest of the summer, but when the press tour for tick, tick... Boom! commenced in the fall, the questions came back. In a profile for Variety, Garfield once again reiterated that while he understood “why people are freaking out about the concept” he once again claimed he was not in No Way Home.

“It’s important for me to say on the record that this is not something I’m aware I am involved in,” he insisted, incorrectly. “But I know I’m not going to be able to say anything that will convince anyone that I don’t know what’s happening. No matter what I say, I’m f—ed. It’s either going to be really disappointing for people or it’s going to be really exciting.”

Also September 2021

That same month, Garfield also appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. By that point, the rumors of the former Spider-Men in No Way Home had grown even louder after a leak of an image that appeared to show Andrew Garfield in costume as Spider-Man standing on some scaffolding in front of a blue-screen. While giggling incessantly, Fallon very delicately broached the subject of the picture.

“What are you talking about?” Garfield first said in an attempt to deflect the subject. Eventually, though, he did admit he had heard about this supposedly leaked picture — only to dismiss it as a fake.

“I heard about it, and I did see it, and it’s a Photoshop,” he said over the audible groans of Tonight Show audience members.

“I’m trying to manage expectations!” Garfield replied, before adding “If they want to give me a call at this late, late stage of the game, I’m sitting here in my tracksuit.” Do you think Andrew Garfield is going to go on a Spider-Man: No Way Home apology tour and then tell Jimmy Fallon that he wasn’t in the movie three months ago, but after Kevin Feige saw him on The Tonight Show he said, “Y’know what? That’s not a bad idea....”

November 2021

Garfield’s answer remained the same two months later when he showed up on The Today Show.

“Listen, I’m not in the film,” he said yet again, with just the slightest hint of despair creeping into his voice. “I love Tom Holland, I love Jon Watts, I love Amy Pascal and Kevin Feige, and what they've done with those movies and that character ... It's an important character to me. So I'm just really excited to see what happens in the third one, as you guys are.”

He’s just really excited, guys. Just so excited.

Also November 2021

After seven straight months of needling despite his constant denials, Garfield finally hit his breaking point when sitting for a YouTube interview with GQ. 

“Listen, at this point…I’m done,” said Garfield, in response to a fan question about Spider-Man. “We’ll all find out when the movie comes out, and we’ll either be very disappointed or we’ll be very happy or someone will say, ‘I told you so,’ and another person will be like, ‘No, I told you so.’ We’ll all find out. I’m sorry in advance.”

Even when he’s annoyed, the dude is still apologetic. Truly, these are the words of a man who understands that with great power comes great responsibility.

December 2021:

With the film just days away, you would think that people could simply wait to see No Way Home for themselves — or recognize that if the guy insisted he wasn’t in the film for eight straight months, he wasn’t going to change his answer two weeks before it got released. AND YET! Here we have a video from Wired where they have him react to his Google AutoFill results, which of course involves Spider-Man because literally that is all anyone has wanted to talk about with Andrew Garfield for the entire year.

”No, I'm not. I’m not I'm not! For crying out loud,” Garfield said directly into the camera, because at this point he had lied so many times about this he might have actually started to believe he really wasn’t in the movie. He did not he was “really excited to see what they're gonna do with the next movie. Because I just love them.”

Is there a lesson here? There’s probably a couple. First of all, it’s fair to ask an actor if they’re in a movie, especially if there’s a big rumor regarding their involvement. But if they answer the question, and they’re pretty clear about it, then maybe we don’t need to ask them ten more times. Because either they’re telling the truth, and there’s no changing that, or they’re purposefully lying to preserve the secret, and they’re not going to change that either. Another lesson: If you have a massive movie that the entire internet coming out, see if you can just opt out of the press tour for all your other projects that year. (Tobey Maguire had the right idea just staying home for all of 2021.)

Spider-Man: No Way Home is playing in theaters. Now please leave Andrew Garfield alone.

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