Somewhere in the Sony Pictures vault, three scenes exist featuring Shailene Woodley as Mary Jane Watson opposite Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker. Woodley was originally cast as the iconic Marvel character in “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” but her entire performance was ultimately removed from Marc Webb’s 2014 sequel—and the planned follow-up that would have properly introduced her Mary Jane never materialized.
During a new career retrospective at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Woodley recalled landing what had been a genuine dream role, filming her scenes with Garfield, and then receiving the unexpected call informing her that she had been cut from the movie.
“We shot it. That was a fun phone call,” Woodley said. “I was cast as Mary Jane for ‘Spider-Man,’ which 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.’”
READ MORE: Mary Jane Watson Reportedly Being Completely Recast For ‘Spider-Man’
Woodley then revealed exactly how much material she filmed before her character disappeared from the finished movie.
“We filmed like three scenes together, me and Andrew Garfield,” she explained. “And then, like a year later, they were like, ‘So, you’re not in the movie anymore.’ And I was like, ‘What? What do you mean?’”
According to Woodley, the explanation was that “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” was already introducing too many new characters, while the filmmakers wanted to preserve the focus on Peter’s relationship with Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy—and her eventual death—before bringing Mary Jane into his life.
“They were like, ‘We’ve introduced a lot of new characters in this last one, and we’re going to wait for Emma Stone’s—like, whatever happens between her and Andrew,’” Woodley recalled. “I guess I’m so paranoid. All of these years of what I’m allowed to say or not allowed to say, I’m like, ‘It’s been out for over 10 years, Shailene.’ Whatever. They were like, ‘Let’s wait for her to die, and then we’ll introduce Mary Jane,’ which made sense. But then they didn’t make that film.”
Woodley added that the filmmakers felt introducing Peter’s future romantic interest before Gwen’s death would have complicated the emotional trajectory of the sequel.
“They thought it would be weird to introduce a new love interest,” she said. “Well, that’s what I was told, you know, but again, who knows what the truth is? I could have been terrible, and they’re like, ‘We can’t do this.’”
At the time, Webb publicly described it as a creative decision intended to streamline the story and focus on Peter and Gwen. Reports subsequently suggested Woodley might be recast for “The Amazing Spider-Man 3,” but Sony’s plans for that sequel and a larger interconnected Spider-Man universe collapsed after the second movie. The studio eventually partnered with Marvel Studios to reboot Peter Parker, with Tom Holland taking over the role.
Woodley also revealed that playing Mary Jane marked an unsettling shift in her career: unlike the roles she had fought for through auditions, she was cast following a meeting with Webb.
“‘Spider-Man’ was not an audition,” Woodley explained. “That was a meeting with Marc Webb, and I remember feeling very rattled by it, actually, because I was like, ‘How do you know that I’m—how do I know that I’m who you want and not just who the studio wants?’ And suddenly there was this new thing of, like, meet the director, you get cast.”
That whiplash must have been jarring. Regardless, more than a decade later, Woodley’s Mary Jane remains an intriguing missing piece of Garfield’s unfinished Spider-Man era—filmed, removed, and never given the sequel that was supposed to bring her fully into Peter Parker’s life. Watch the full SAG-AFTRA Foundation conversation below.
