Grace Bites Into Spidey 3's Venom

by: Lufguy 1 year, 9 months, 3 days, 9 hours, 21 minutes ago 3

Per Patrick Lee at SciFiWire.

Topher Grace, who plays Eddie Brock/Venom in Spider-Man 3, told SCI FI Wire that he is a longtime fan of the comic franchise, like writer / director Sam Raimi, and that playing Venom was particularly exciting. “When we saw the preview at Comic-Con, I was like, ‘That would be a big moment in my life if I weren’t in the film,’” Grace said in an interview. “And I’m playing the guy. I was going nuts."

Grace plays Brock, a rival to Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker both at the Daily Bugle and for the hand of Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). He becomes more of an enemy when a black alien goo triggers his transformation into the powerful Venom.

"There’s a lot of freedom with a bad guy,” Grace said. “When you’re a protagonist, whenever you go a certain distance away from the center, a bell goes off, because you have a responsibility to the audience to be very real. So they can kind of relate to you. But when you’re a bad guy, especially when you’re me, who’s kind of a psycho alien from outer space, like, the bell doesn’t go off as many times."

Topher said that Eddie Brock is deceptively similar to Peter, at least at the beginning of the sequel. “They kind of have a very similar job,” he said. “He works at The Bugle, they both work for J.J., and Eddie has a better exterior than Peter. You know, they look similar, but he’s got a little bit more product in his hair, he dresses a little flashier, and you know, he’s a little more of a flirt. They kind of like the same women, and as the movie progresses you realize that, of course, we know that Peter has this great interior, and we find out that Eddie does not. So it’s kind of a case study, [as] if someone was given the same powers as Peter was given in part one, but didn’t have that great advice from Uncle Ben. I used to say to them all the time on set, it’s like my motto is ‘With great power comes great fun.’"

For scenes after Brock finally transforms into Venom, Grace had to undergo a grueling makeup regimen. “I had four hours of prosthetic makeup every morning when I was Venom, and just getting on the suit takes about 45 minutes before that, so I had to get there at 3 or something,” he said. “And I had to work out. I put on 20 pounds, which really was very hard. I’m really a skinny dude, and it was a lot of work. It wasn’t just hanging from those rigs. I’d watch Tobey and go, ‘Oh, that looks like fun, swinging around.’ But I ... did, like, one one-hundredth of what he does on the film, and I just have a lot of respect for what he’s been doing for all of these years. Physically, it’s a whole sort of process."