Kirsten: I’d have liked to be in new Spider-Man
KIRSTEN DUNST would happily have joined the ‘boys’ in the blockbuster SpiderMan: No Way Home — had she only been invited. Instead, the actress can be seen giving a sublime performance in Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog (streaming now on Netflix), as a woman hurled into psychological despair after being shunned by her brother-in-law (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Twenty years ago, Dunst played Peter Parker’s girl Mary Jane Watson in the first three Spidey movies — opposite Tobey Maguire as the teenage webslinger.
Maguire and fellow Spider-Man alumnus Andrew Garfield were magically brought back to life in No Way Home, to join current Spidey Tom Holland, thanks to the sorcery of Doctor Strange...played by her Power Of The Dog co-star Cumberbatch. (And before you squawk, this is hardly a plot spoiler, given that the film’s been out for seven weeks now.)
‘Apparently people flipped out when they saw Tobey,’ Dunst said, adding: ‘I would have participated, if asked.’
She’s not seen the film yet. ‘I saw some clips,’ she said, and decided it looked a little violent for her threeand-a-half year old son Ennis (‘he’s more of a Lego guy’), not to mention nine-month-old James.
Marvel movies always have good actors in them, she commented, ‘and you get paid a lot of money to do them, too’.
She’d love to play a Marvel baddie one day, but feels she’s so enmeshed in the Spider-Man universe that her dream would prove impossible.
Dunst isn’t part of industrial Hollywood any more. She’s much happier working with the likes of Sofia Coppola, Lars von Trier (when he’s behaving himself) and Campion.
The latter’s The Power Of The Dog received eight nominations yesterday in the Bafta film awards ... including ones for Campion and Cumberbatch — though surprisingly none for Dunst.
Her real-life partner Jesse Plemons, who plays rancher George Burbank, brother to Cumberbatch’s Phil, got a nod, too. George has just married Kirsten’s Rose, who comes to the relationship complete with her grown-up son, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee (also nominated). Dunst told me she dug deep into past ‘pain’ to capture the extreme mental pressure Rose is under, as a result of Phil’s bullying. She dredged up old feelings, from her late teens to early 20s: stuff that could ‘make you feel bad, real easily’. Like the memory of a guy in her life who was controlling, ‘making me feel bad about something, being gaslit, basically. I felt that before — in work and in a relationship — as I’m sure many people have.’
Growing up in the business, she felt actresses — younger actresses in particular — were under pressure to be ‘much more pleasing’ to those in positions of power. ‘It’s please, please, please!’ she cried, in mock despair.
And she had to go into those feelings, ‘and magnify them’, to play Rose.
In the film, she and Cumberbatch barely speak to each other — so they practised that, for real. ‘Jane gave Benedict permission not to be nice Benedict,’ she recalled.
As a result, they wouldn’t interact, on or off set, unless they happened to bump into each other on the weekend, when out with their families. At which point ‘he basically would apologise’.
The austere landscape on location in New Zealand added to the oppressive atmosphere during filming.
Now back in the States, Dunst, Plemons and their children are living in Austin, Texas, while he films a crime drama called Love And Death.
Dunst told me she’s not scared of catching Covid — but needs to be careful, because if Plemons gets it, the TV production will shut down. So when the family eat
together, it’s outside. Easier there than here, I imagine.
Next month, she’s headed back to work herself for the first time since setting off on her New
Zealand adventure, when Ennis was barely two.
She will star in Alex Garland’s new film Civil War; the plot of which is still under wraps, but which according to the actress is ‘about a civil war that’s basically happening now’.