Kirsten Dunst may have been one-half of the most iconic onscreen kisses in cinematic history, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a “miserable” experience for the actress.
Dunst starred as Mary-Jane Watson in Sam Raimi‘s “Spider-Man” trilogy from 2002 to 2007. The first film featured Mary-Jane kissing Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) without realizing he was her high school classmate Peter Parker. As Spider-Man hangs upside down after saving Mary-Jane, she kisses him in the rain.
“I remember [director] Sam Raimi giving me a book of famous kisses to be inspired [by] but also he really wanted to make it special,” Dunst said during the “Jonathan Ross Show” (via The Independent), “even though it was kind of miserable actually doing it.”
Dunst elaborated, saying, “It was pouring with rain, freezing, Tobey couldn’t breathe so it was almost like I was resuscitating him.”
The actress previously told Marie Claire that the famed kiss was not her only less-than-ideal experience while filming “Spider-Man.”
“It was a joke, but on ‘Spider-Man,’ they would call me ‘girly-girl’ sometimes on the walkie-talkie. ‘We need girly-girl.’ But I never said anything,” Dunst said. “Like, don’t call me that!”
Dunst added that she is open to returning to the world of superheroes “because you get paid a lot of money, and I have two children, and I support my mother.”
Her “Spider-Man” co-star Maguire reprised his eponymous role for 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” That same year, Dunst reflected on the “extreme” pay disparity between herself and Maguire for the original trilogy.
“I didn’t even think about it [at the time]. I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, Tobey [Maguire] is playing Spider-Man,’” Dunst told The Independent. “But you know who was on the cover of the second ‘Spider-Man’ poster? Spider-Man and me.”
