Tom Holland has starred in several blockbuster movies, but for many fans, his most memorable performance was when he competed against Zendaya on Lip Sync Battle in 2017.
And while appearing on Gordon Ramsay’s YouTube series recently, the Spider-Man actor recalled how his iconic rendition of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” — which was complete with backup dancers, umbrella props and a rain machine — came at the cost of a promise he had made to his costar-turned-fiancée beforehand. “It’s so funny, Zendaya and I, we were chatting at the time about what we were gonna do, and we had agreed that we would take it easy,” he began.
“That was the agreement, that it was like, ‘I’m not gonna do anything crazy, you’re not gonna do anything crazy,’” he continued. ‘We’re just gonna keep it nice and easy breezy.’”
Despite their promises to each other, Holland says that his showcase got “crazier and crazier” during rehearsals as the creative team kept adding ideas. The result was an extravagant medley of “Singing in the Rain” and “Umbrella,” which found the actor taking the stage in a cropped wig, leotard and fishnet stockings. (“They were my granny’s, actually,” he told Ramsay, who asked whether the latter garment had belonged to Holland’s mother.)
At a certain point leading up to the performance, the Marvel star says he just had to lean into the spectacle. “I was like, ‘F–k it, I wanna wear fishnets and do this, and I want a wig and a quick change,’” he told Ramsay, laughing.
Fortunately, Zendaya surprised Holland with an over-the-top performance of her own, also breaking their promise to keep things simple in favor of dazzling the Lip Sync Battle crowd with a flashy take on Bruno Mars’ “24k Magic.” Plus, Holland says his performance — which would quickly go viral and still frequently resurfaces online — showed fans a new side of him.
“What was really great about that is people didn’t know that I could dance,” added Holland, who sang and danced as the titular role in Billy Elliot the Musical on the West End long before he was Spider-Man. “I kept that quiet, I don’t know why. And I came out with a bang.”
Relive Holland’s Lip Sync Battle performance by watching above.
