Spider-Man’s Marisa Tomei begged Marvel to give Aunt May a girlfriend
Marisa Tomei as May. (Marvel)
Spider-Man: No Way Home star Marisa Tomei has said what we’re all thinking: Aunt May should be queer.
Tomei’s May has always been the cool aunt, and now, the actor has revealed how she rallied for the character to be given a girlfriend.
In the Spider-Man Homecoming trilogy, we meet May some time after losing her husband, Uncle Ben. She begins dating Happy Hogan in the second film, Far From Home, but Tomei feels their on-off relationship is one of convenience.
“I really feel that their relationship is more off than on,” she told Geeks of Color. “I think they’re friends…. but they’re stuck together… There’s no one else they can talk to right now [about Peter Parker], they like each other enough, they had their fun, their fling, but they’re still cool.”
Tomei added: “Before even the idea of Happy showed up, there was a moment where I felt that May should be with a woman.”
Laughing, she explained that she “really wanted Amy Pascal from Sony to be my girlfriend”.
“I was like: ‘No one even has to know Amy, I’ll just be in a scene and you’ll be over there… it’ll just be like a subtle thing,'” she continued.
“No one went for it at the time.”
Before the idea of Happy and Aunt May came to be, Marisa Tomei said she wanted Aunt May to have a girlfriend. #SpiderManNoWayHome
Full interview: https://t.co/4WWDIp0zqG pic.twitter.com/BJSVcbMTxR
— Geeks of Color #BlackLivesMatter (@GeeksOfColor) December 19, 2021
Mind. Blown.
Were Aunt May to come out as queer, she’d join a very small – but growing – group of LGBT+ Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) characters.
Recently, the Hawkeye Disney Plus series introduced Conrad – aka Bombshell – is a juggling (yes, juggling) mercenary who specialises in explosives who is married to another woman.
Before that, Eternals became the first MCU movie to introduce a queer superhero, Phastos.
Loki has also been confirmed as canonically bisexual in his self-titled Disney Plus series, while Valkyrie’s sexuality is to be explored in the upcoming Thor: Love and War.
Spider-Man: Far From Home was notable for including the MCU’s first out trans actor: Zach Barack, who played a friend of Peter Parker name Zach, and Tyler Luke Cunningham as a featured extra.
