Shailene Woodley was stunned to learn her Amazing Spider-Man 2 scenes had been cut a year after filming
Shailene Woodley had already spent time filming as Mary Jane Watson for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 when she discovered she wouldn't actually appear in the movie.
The actor has now revealed she didn't learn her scenes had been cut until around a year after filming them, despite having been cast in the role she had dreamed of playing.
Woodley opened up about the experience during a recent SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations interview, explaining that she had filmed three scenes alongside Andrew Garfield before being told the character had been removed from the movie.
For Woodley, landing the part had been particularly exciting because Spider-Man was her favorite superhero growing up, while Mary Jane had been her favorite character.
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She recalled being cast by director Marc Webb and said: "This was my dream because I really, oh my god, Spider-Man's my favorite superhero. Mary Jane was my favorite character growing up. So, when I got it, I was like, 'This is so exciting.'"
But after filming her scenes, the actor was left confused when she was eventually told she wouldn't be in the finished movie.
Why was Shailene Woodley cut from The Amazing Spider-Man 2?
According to Woodley, she was told the movie had gained too many new characters and the filmmakers wanted to hold off on introducing Mary Jane.
The plan, as it was explained to her, was to wait until Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone, was no longer Peter Parker's girlfriend before bringing Mary Jane into the story.
Woodley said she was told: "Let's wait for [Gwen Stacy] to die and then we'll introduce Mary Jane."
Gwen's death does indeed happen in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but the follow-up movie that could have introduced Woodley's Mary Jane never happened.
The decision meant Woodley's three filmed scenes with Garfield were ultimately left on the cutting-room floor.
The actor has also acknowledged that she only knows the explanation she was given at the time, joking that there could have been another reason entirely.
"Well, that's what I was told, you know," she said. "But again, who knows what the truth is. I could have been terrible and they're like, 'We can't do this.'"
There was, however, another explanation for why the character was removed.
At the 2014 New York premiere of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, producer Matt Tolmach told Variety that the production had simply tried to fit too much story into one movie.
"We bit off more story than we could tell," Tolmach said, explaining that the script had reached 148 pages before the filmmakers realized the Mary Jane storyline wouldn't work in the movie.
Woodley's experience was therefore particularly unusual: she had already filmed the scenes and then had to wait roughly a year before learning audiences wouldn't see them.
The role of Mary Jane had previously been played by Kirsten Dunst in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, opposite Tobey Maguire.
Woodley went on to discuss several other projects during her nearly 90-minute SAG-AFTRA Foundation interview, including Divergent, Dumb Money, The Descendants, The Fault in Our Stars, Big Little Lies and season two of Paradise.
Topics: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Entertainment, Hollywood
Thomas Bamford