Everyone remembers the famous upside-down kiss between Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker and Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson — and apparently, Dunst remembers how harrowing it was to shoot.
During an appearance on the British series The Jonathan Ross Show at the end of March, Dunst told the host that filming the rain-soaked, upside-down kiss was freezing — and Maguire could barely even breathe in the first place.
“I remember [the film’s director] Sam Raimi giving me a book of famous kisses to be inspired but also he wanted to make it special even though it was kind of miserable doing it,” Dunst told Ross. “It was pouring with rain, freezing, Tobey couldn’t breathe so it was almost like I was resuscitating him,” she said.
So much for the romantic look of the kiss — though it does make sense that filming this scene in a fake downpour was pretty gross. This isn’t the only time that Dunst has commented on the now-iconic scene. “Water was getting up [Maguire’s] nose because of the rain, and then he couldn’t breathe in the Spider-Man suit, and then… and it just felt very late at night,” she previously told W Magazine in 2022.
The upside-down kiss wasn’t the only issue Kirsten Dunst faced during Spider-Man
Kirsten Dunst has revealed quite a bit of behind-the-scenes information about her time in the “Spider-Man” trilogy, and not all of it is particularly great. During a profile in Marie Claire conducted by interviewer Michelle Ruiz, the Oscar nominee said that sometimes crew members used a jokey nickname for her on set … and she hated it.
“It was a joke, but on ‘Spider-Man,’ they would call me ‘girly-girl’ sometimes on the walkie-talkie. ‘We need a girly girl’ — but I never said anything.” According to Ruiz’s article, Dunst said all of this in a low voice and continued, “Like, don’t call me that,” eventually getting her thoughts more in order and saying that she felt too young and intimidated to speak up properly. “You didn’t say anything,” Dunst said of her unwanted “girly-girl” nickname. “You just took it.”