Naomi Watts reveals her Marvel debut with secret role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Naomi Watts surprised her fans on Tuesday by revealing that she has a secretive role in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Watts, 57, shared the news in a sweet Instagram post that doubled as a tribute to Spider-Man star Tom Holland, whom she had previously worked with.

In her caption, the English-born actress shared that she was playing an AI-generated digital assistant to Peter Parker/Spider-Man. 

'From playing your mom to playing your AI (100% human made),' Watts wrote. 'Congrats Tom, [director] Destin [Daniel Cretton], and the whole Spider-Man: Brand New Day team on the historic opening weekend!! Immensely proud to even just a tiny part of this incredible film!'

The Daily Mail has reached out to Watts for comment but has not yet heard back.

She shared a beaming selfie showing herself wearing headphones in a recording booth while she chatted with Cretton – who flashed a shaka sign – via Zoom.

Watts's second photo had been snapped on the set of one of the earlier Spider-Man films starring Holland, as it appeared to feature one of her children – 18-year-old Sasha – but he looked considerably younger in the photo.

Holland was dressed in his Spider-Man suit between takes, but he removed it so that the child in front of him – which may have been Watts daughter Kai, now 17 – could don the mask.

The Mulholland Drive actress – who married actor Billy Crudup in 2023 – shares her two teens with her former partner, Liev Schreiber, whom she was with from 2005 to 2016.

It's unlikely that Watts would have ever been on the physical set of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, as her voice-only role would have been more efficiently recorded remotely, as her photo appeared to show.

That means that she and Holland may have never even been speaking to each other, as he likely recorded his lines in front of the camera without Watts's voice.

However, the two previously worked together in person at the very start of Holland's career.

He made his screen debut in 2012's The Impossible, a disaster film inspired by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. 

Holland and Ewan McGregor starred as a married couple taking a Christmas vacation to Thailand with their three children just as the devastating Tsunami overwhelmed the area surrounding their beach resort. 

Watts and Holland, who played her oldest son, shared numerous scenes in the film as they survived the tsunami but were separated from the rest of their family amid the destruction. 

Their reunion was complicated not just by the decimation of the area's communications infrastructure, but also by a twist of fate, as Watt's character is rushed into surgery for chest injuries, only for her medical chart to be swapped with that of a woman who had died, leading her husband to think that she had not made it out of surgery.

According to the BBC, Holland spent a grueling six weeks of the production working in a massive water tank with Watts that simulated the Tsunami and the wreckage of the flood seaside area.

In a 2014 interview with The Scotsman, Holland – who was only 14 when he shot The Impossible – described the 'scary environment' that he and Watts had to work in day after day.

'When we were filming that whole tsunami sequence, it was terrifying,' he shared. 'People think that the film was shot using green screen over a short period of time, but the minimum of green screen effects were used. We were in that tank for six weeks. It was very real. You can imagine how tiring and brutal that was.

'The first time I watched it, I actually found myself trying to gasp for myself,' he added. 'There was no holding back. Every take we had to give it everything – that was true for both Naomi and me.'

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now in theaters everywhere.