Turns out Tom Holland can make a mean drink, especially after mastering mixing espresso martinis. The “Spider-Man: No Way Home” star went undercover in the London bar scene to prep for playing videogame adventurer Nathan Drake in “Uncharted.” “For me, one of my favorite things about what we do for a living is when you get the opportunity to learn a new skill for a reason, other than you just want to give it a go,” Holland said during SiriusXM’s Pop Culture Spotlight with Jessica Shaw, via People. “So I went to a bartending school. I ended up doing a few shifts at this bar in London, which was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. And it’s a nice little set piece in the movie.” Holland added, “I would go in there and take the bartender’s clothes and be in there undercover. It was fun. I enjoyed myself. I like making an espresso martini. It’s a lot of fun.”
As word spread around town, and people started figuring out that, ‘Apparently Tom Holland’s bartending at this bar,’ then the general manager started figuring it out,” he continued. “And then eventually I sort of got kicked out.” And it turns out, Holland is still barred from the bar — or at least, from being behind it. “I have been back to the bar, but it’s a little bit of a rocky relationship at the minute,” Holland said. “I’ve been giving them a lot of press though. So they just shut up and let me back.” Holland’s shaken, not stirred approach to bartending also led to the making of “Uncharted” itself, since Holland originally pitched a “young James Bond” origin story film to Sony. “It didn’t really make sense. It didn’t work. It was the dream of a young kid, and I don’t think the Bond estate were particularly interested,” Holland told Total Film (via Games Radar) in January 2022. “The idea of a young Bond film sparked this idea, in turn, that you could do a Nathan Drake story as an origin story, rather than as an addition to the games. And that opened a conversation.” Cheers to that. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
