Shailene Woodley Reveals Her Disappointment After ‘Amazing Spider-Man 2’ Cut Mary Jane Role

More than 12 years after filming “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” Shailene Woodley has revealed how disappointed she was to learn that her scenes as Mary Jane Watson had been cut from the movie.

Woodley was originally cast as Mary Jane, Peter Parker’s famous love interest, opposite Andrew Garfield. She said getting the role was a dream come true because Spider-Man had been her favorite superhero since childhood.

“I really, oh my god, Spider-Man’s my favorite superhero. Mary Jane was my favorite character growing up,” Woodley recalled during a recent SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations interview.

She filmed about three scenes with Garfield for the 2014 movie. But nearly a year later, she received a phone call telling her that Mary Jane would no longer appear in the film.

“That was a fun phone call,” Woodley joked.

According to Woodley, the filmmakers told her they had introduced too many new characters and wanted to focus on the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone. They planned to introduce Mary Jane later, after Gwen’s story came to an end.

“Let’s wait for [Gwen Stacy] to die and then we’ll introduce Mary Jane,” Woodley said she was told.

Gwen does die at the end of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” However, the planned follow-up movie was never made, meaning Woodley never got the chance to play Mary Jane on screen.

Woodley also said she was told that having Mary Jane in the movie alongside Gwen could make Peter Parker’s romantic story confusing.

“That's what I was told, you know. But again, who knows what the truth is,” she said, joking that perhaps the filmmakers simply thought her performance was not good enough.

The film’s producer, Matt Tolmach, gave a different explanation when speaking to Variety in 2014. He said the filmmakers had taken on more story than they could fit into the movie.

“We bit off more story than we could tell,” Tolmach said, explaining that the script had grown to 148 pages before the team decided Mary Jane’s storyline would not be part of the final film.

Woodley’s version of Mary Jane therefore remains one of the most famous “what if” casting choices in the Spider-Man franchise. The character was later played by Zendaya in the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, while Kirsten Dunst famously portrayed Mary Jane opposite Tobey Maguire in Sam Raimi’s trilogy.