The person behind this webcast? None other than J. Jonah Jameson — played by J.K. Simmons, the same actor who played Jameson in the three Spider-Man movies directed by Sam Raimi circa 2002-2007.
Except for a change in hairstyle (meaning, none) and the famous Marvel newspaper The Daily Bugle becoming DailyBugle.net, this was essentially the same loud, brash, arrogant Jameson we knew from those movies, which starred Tobey Maguire as Spidey. But how could this be?
“It was and at times, no, it wasn’t, but to me, it’s absolutely the same guy,” he says. “It’s the same heart and soul, the same loudmouth blowhard who is abusing the power of the press and self-aggrandizing. Lots of bark and not much bite. In terms of the actual playing of him, it was just kind of taking him from the old print medium into the current screen medium. That’s really the only significant adjustment.”
Simmons filmed his scenes during a “couple of weeks off” from working on Being the Ricardos, and was struck by the size of the Spider-Man production, especially with COVID still raging. “Just looking around at the number of lights and the number of bodies on set, it’s always a stark difference between that and something like Being the Ricardos or National Champions or my wife’s film, a low budget indie which we did shortly after that. It’s the same job at the end of the day. Just more people doing it.”
