Andrew Garfield has stated that he kept his participation in Spider-Man: No Way Home a secret from his The Amazing Spider-Man co-star (and ex-girlfriend) Emma Stone.

Garfield and Spider-Man alum Tobey Maguire joined up with current Peter Parker Tom Holland in the 2021 picture, as fans may know.

Garfield, 38, was renowned for keeping his participation in the picture under wraps, and Stone, 33, who played Peter’s love interest Gwen Stacy in the Amazing Spider-Man movie, followed suit.

“Emma kept texting me, asking if I was in the new Spider-Man movie. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘Shut up, just tell me,’ she said. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said. Even with her, I continued going. ‘It was hilarious,'” he said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz. “Then she saw it and said, ‘You’re a jerk.'”

“I didn’t want to tell anyone. I took it super seriously. I told no one.”

After meeting on the set of the 2012 superhero blockbuster, Garfield and Stone dated for four years until parting up in 2015, after the release of 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Despite the fact that they’ve both moved on romantically, Stone, 33, and Garfield, 38, seem to still be pals.

“As an artist, I am her greatest supporter. Her art never ceases to inspire me. I’m continuously impressed by the way she conducts herself,” Garfield stated on Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast. “So, for me it’s been bliss to be able to watch her success and watch her bloom into the actress she is.”

“We care about each other so much,” Garfield added at the time. “That’s a given, that’s kind of this unconditional thing.”

“There’s so much love between us and so much respect … It’s also been wonderful to have that kind of support for each other.”

In late 2021, the actor couldn’t stop gushing to Variety about his time on the set of The Amazing Spider-Man flicks, calling the experience “beautiful” in part because he “got to meet Emma and work with her and Sally Field,” who portrayed Peter’s Aunt May Parker in the films.

In a recent interview with The Wrap, Garfield compared the “stressful” but “weirdly enjoyable” experience of playing No Way Home to a game.

“There were moments where I was like, ‘God, I hate lying.’ I don’t like to lie and I’m not a good liar, but I kept framing it as a game,” he added. “And I kept imagining myself purely as a fan of that character, which is not hard to do.”

Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently playing in cinemas.