Tom Holland has had the busiest year of his acting career headlining both Spider-Man: No Way Home and the upcoming live-action adaptation of Uncharted, though according to his recent profile on THR, transitioning from one role to the other was a challenge in its own right due to the sheer difference between the two characters.
In the case of the slinging web-head, we’re talking about a superhero with enhanced reflexes and a lot of strength, not to mention an insane amount of CG work that takes the bulk of the action off of Holland’s shoulders. Nathan Drake, meanwhile, is a completely different story.
The legendary treasure hunter is the ultimate embodiment of your cool action film hero, but that also comes with a clutch that Holland isn’t quite familiar with, thanks to Spider-Man. Because as much as we sing the praises of Nate as a protagonist, at the end of the day, he’s a normal human being who engages most of his enemies in hand-to-hand combat.
The difference is also discernible in the two character’s body language. Peter Parker is a nerdy teenage scientist, while Nate is a mature ladies’ man that can only be characterized as overtly egotistic. That difference is apparently something Spider-Man: No Way Home producer Amy Pascal noticed and pointed out to Tom. In the actor’s own words:
“When we finished shooting Uncharted, I went straight from Barcelona to Atlanta to start shooting [Spider-Man: No Way Home], and I do remember Amy Pascal asking me why I was walking like a man. And I was sort of confused; I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And she was like, ‘You don’t look the same. You’re not walking the same. There’s just something different about you.’ So with Nathan Drake, his physicality is very, very different to that of Peter Parker, and it took me a while to shape that kind of side of him.”
Apparently, the actor had to train really hard for five months during the COVID-19 hiatus so as to not look like one of Mark Wahlberg’s “biceps” when standing next to him in the film. Fortunately, we’ll be able to see this different “physicality” at play when Uncharted premieres in less than two weeks on Feb. 18.