Spider-Man actor on taking Peter Parker to darker places: "It left me exhausted at the end of every working day"

Everyone remembers that scene in 2007's Spider-Man 3, when the hero, played by Tobey Maguire, reaches peak asshole status under the spell of the symbiote suit. At the time, the sidewalk-strolling set-piece – where Peter Parker gains an attitude, an inflated ego and a fringe – was deliberately tongue-in-cheek, cringeworthy and hilarious all at once, and is still the subject of viral memes to this day. In-keeping with the playfulness of Sam Raimi's Spidey trilogy, though, the scene fits its framing, both tonally and thematically. 

In Marvel's Spider-Man 2, however, Peter's submission to the black suit is more complicated. The same behavior changes consume the star of the show, but all told this slant on the symbiote, Spider-Man, and, ultimately, Venom is far darker; more closely aping its The Amazing Spider-Man comic run, as opposed to the suit's myriad appearances in other media since. 

I won't spoil anything here, but suffice to say this process in Insomniac Games' much-anticipated follow-up uncovers a moodier, more twisted and volatile side to Peter Parker's Spider-Man. And for Yuri Lowenthal, the actor and voice actor who helped bring the character to life, that was exactly what hooked him from the outset.

"Even from the outline of the story, I got so excited," Lowenthal explains. "Not just because we were getting to tell a Venom story, and getting to tell a symbiote story, but also because we were getting to tell a story with a fundamentally different Peter Parker. And any actor will tell you that they'll play a villain in a heartbeat. You know, we prefer playing villains to heroes because it gives us license to behave badly, with no social repercussions." 

"That said, I was unaware how difficult that would be for me. Peter is so, well, Peter, he's our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and so making him antithetical to all of those things was challenging to the point where it left me exhausted at the end of every working day."

Back to black 

Albeit gradual, the pivot in Peter Parker's persona in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is a distinguished one, which sees the OG Spider-Man steadily losing sight of what's important to him. Supporting characters like Miles Morales, aka the game's other playable Spider-Man, and Mary Jane Watson do what they can to steer Peter from temptation, but the inherent strength of the symbiote suit proves a difficult obstacle to shift.  

A moodier protagonist, of course, calls for a moodier performance. I ask Lowenthal if this impacted his approach to his acting methods, his preparation or his down time. "I didn't bring my work home as such," he says, laughing. "But, again, I was going home exhausted at night unlike before and I wasn't used to that. I'd gotten into a very easy place with Peter, and suddenly I was required to shove him into a different box, and that was always weird, and physically and mentally exhausting. So I brought that side of it home."

"But my wife, who played Yuri [Watanabe] in the first game, she, just like that character, will not take any of my shit. Then there's my son who's seven, he's jumping around like a superhero most of the time anyway, so I feel like I still get to live that life when I get home. It's funny, because my son was like two or three when we made the first game. When I was leaving for work every morning, telling him I was going away for the day to be Spider-Man – it occurred to me later on that he might have thought I was going out to be actual Spider-Man!"

Despite taking nothing for granted while playing such an important role in such a blockbuster video game series – a gratitude Lowenthal extends to his work across the likes of Mortal Kombat 1, Diablo 4, Redfall and a host of other games – the working life of a superhero video game actor has the same peaks and troughs as any other vocation behind the scenes. Which is to say: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 in its finished, super-polished, five-star state after several years of development, crafted by thousands of hugely talented individuals is great; but it's always worth remembering just how much goes into bringing such an ambitious undertaking to life. 

By Lowenthal's own admission, his part in this is to bring a performance that's as full and as natural as the virtual world the developers around him have created. When filming and motion-capturing the game's breakneck, larger-than-life cutscenes, this might see the cast in its entirety gather in the studio, pouring their collective blood, sweat and tears into the headline-stealing set-pieces that feature in the final product. Other times, it might require Lowenthal to spend consecutive days in an isolated booth, recording and re-recording seemingly trivial (but no less important) lines for open-world segments opposite performance director Kris Zimmerman.  

"I'll tell you something, and I don't think I'm speaking out of school when I say this," says Lowenthal. "When Insomniac casts people, they cast them for the role, for the story, and to be part of a family. And that last one is equally important, maybe even more important than the other two, to be honest, but they definitely pay attention to all three elements. They need to know that each actor is a person who's willing to come and play and be creative and work with other people and not fill the room with an ego, or to cause problems because, you know, this takes a lot of work, and they don't have a lot of time to do it. And everyone I've worked with on these games has been amazing [with this in mind]"

"As a personal thing, though, if I know their career, I can't deny that's exciting. Like when Mark Ralston first came in, you know, to play Norman Osborn. I waited a couple of days of working with him before I said, 'Hey, Mark, what's, what's the statute of limitations on asking you to tell stories about working on Aliens? Are you cool about it?'" And the same goes for Tony Todd – he's the Candyman, you know? Tony and I worked on something recently so we have a pre-existing relationship, but even still, when he walks into a room it definitely takes a second to get past his career and all the characters he's played. Luckily, Tony is a very loving, giving, collaborative actor, and he's just so cool."

 With great power 

Believe it or not, everything up to this point is the easy part for your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. The acting, the voice over work, the mo-cap performances, the years and years of hard graft, of injecting love and personality into every recording, and then going home exhausted in the real-world, having saved virtual NYC across Manhattan, Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn and Coney Island from some of the toughest supervillains the city has ever seen in-game. 

That is a walk in Central Park. The hard part, for Lowenthal at least, is this part – where Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has only just made its way into the hands of players, and when those same people are still forming their opinions of both Spider-Man's latest video game outing under the care of Insomniac Games, and a performance powered by Lowenthal himself.  

"This part is maddening," he says. "Right up to this point, you just want people to play it already. I think everybody on the team is the same. Once they were able to let go of it, they worked on it right up until the very last second, refining and refining everything, but I think all of us just want people to play it, to really get into it, and to, hopefully, enjoy it."

"This part is a different kind of nerves because there's nothing anyone on this side can do now. You can never please everyone, but hopefully we'll be able to excite Spider-Man fans and video game fans in the same way we did last time."

This feature forms part of our special On the Radar series celebrating the launch of Marvel's Spider-Man 2. You can follow all our week-long coverage in our On The Radar - Marvel's Spider-Man 2 hub.