It turns out that Ms. Marvel star Iman Vellani bumped into Tom Holland while they were both filming… and it could have gone better.
During an interview with Elite Daily, the 19-year-old Ms. Marvel channeled her inner nerd as she recounted exactly what happened when she met Spider-Man star, Tom Holland. She described him being “so nice,” and also recounted her embarrassment at the sudden visit while she was in hair and makeup.
“He was like, ‘What’s your show even about?’” she revealed. “I was like, ‘What’s Spider-Man about?’ He fully shows me a photo of him with Tobey Maguire!”
At the time, Vellani was filming Ms. Marvel in an Atlanta studio next to where Holland was filming Spider-Man: No Way Home… and nobody knew about the Spider-Men team-up.
“I get we’re both in Marvel,” she said. “But I didn’t need to know that before it happened.”
As a huge Marvel fan, having Spider-Man’s big twist spoiled by Holland himself was no doubt rough for Vellani. She has even gone so far as to argue with Kevin Feige over which universe the MCU really is.
“Every time I talk to Kevin, we have this argument where I say, ‘The MCU is not 616,’” she said. “He’s like, ‘It is because I said so.’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s 199999’. He hates it. So, we keep having this argument, and then they put 616 in the movie. I’m like, ‘Kevin, you know it’s not 616.’ He just sends me a sad face. I was like, ‘Great.’”
Although Ms. Marvel has appeared in the comic books, her powers are a lot different in the MCU. But that doesn’t stop her from connecting with her other Marvel heroes.
“Obviously, Tony Stark, a middle-aged white dude, and me, a 16-year-old brown kid — they’re not the same thing,” she says. “But I related to a lot of his inner conflict of what does it mean to do the right thing and be a good person? And how can you be a good person when you’ve done so much wrong, and how do you eradicate those errors?”
Read more about Ms. Marvel with IGN’s review, as well as our look at the entire cast of the new Disney+ show, and how it fits into Marvel’s Phase 4.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.