“Talk about crushed”: Marisa Tomei and the “iconic character” that left her horrified
Conventional wisdom is that, to win an Oscar, you have to play a serious character.
Comedy does not fare well at the biggest night of the showbiz calendar, with only a handful of actors having won the top prize for being funny, and one of them is Marisa Tomei.
For her role as Mona Lisa Vito, the fast-talking, no-nonsense New Yorker in My Cousin Vinny, she was rewarded with the Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actress’, defeating such luminaries as Joan Plowright and Vanessa Redgrave to strike a blow to the ‘more than just a pretty face’ archetype, but modern audiences will likely know her for her role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
She’s made five appearances as May Parker, aunt of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man (who’s apparently a big fan of her work), becoming the third actor to bring the role to the big screen in live-action form, following Rosemary Harris in Sam Raimi’s trilogy and Sally Field in Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man films.
The big joke surrounding Tomei’s version of Aunt May is that she’s sexy, for traditionally, the character is portrayed as an older woman, a mother figure to young Peter, presented more like a kindly grandmother figure. Not this version, as in literally her first scene, Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark is surprised by how young and good-looking she is when she opens the door to him, a fun twist that gave Tomei the opportunity to get more involved in the action later down the line.
While this take on Aunt May was ultimately very flattering towards Tomei, she took a little bit of convincing. Clearly not a comic book fan, she was a little shocked when she found out how her new character was originally portrayed, as she explained to The New York Times.
“I was horrified,” she said, before breaking out into a chuckle, “Talk about crushed. I went through the whole negotiation without knowing. They just kept saying ‘an iconic character, an iconic character’. It sounds kind of ridiculous, but it all happened very quickly. It was right before Captain America: Civil War was shooting. Everything happened within maybe ten days. But I was more focused on my deal, honestly. And then, the illustration was revealed to me.”
Maybelle ‘May’ Parker, to give her full name, has been part of Spider-Man’s story right from the start, making her first appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15 (the same issue as the web-slinger), emblematic of the teenage demigod’s human side, where her relationship with Peter, especially in the wake of Uncle Ben’s death, is often played for sympathy, especially if she ends up in danger.
The decision to make her younger and less vulnerable was deliberately made, thus, to challenge this dynamic and bring a new dimension to the long-standing icon, and while she might not have been immediately impressed, Tomei did a great job as Aunt May, providing plenty of laughs and tears, especially with her tragic death in Spider-Man: No Way Home. It sounds like she didn’t hate her tenure as the character, unlike Sally Field…
