Fans expected Spider-Man: Brand New Day to deliver its share of surprise cameos, but one familiar Marvel face apparently got caught in the editing web.
In resurfaced footage from July’s GalaxyCon in Raleigh, North Carolina, 47-year-old Sin City and Ahsoka star Rosario Dawson told fellow actor Vincent D’Onofrio that she had slipped back into her Daredevil scrubs as Claire Temple for the blockbuster.
There was just one tiny problem—the scene never made the final cut.
Dawson broke the bad news to the audience:
“I even shot a scene in the new ‘Spider-Man’ movie, but I got cut out.”
For those who don’t know, Claire Temple is essentially the woman Marvel’s street-level vigilantes call when their extracurricular activities go sideways. Introduced in Netflix’s Daredevil in 2015, the nurse patches up Matt Murdock’s ninja-related injuries and becomes his trusted medical confidant.
But Dawson getting Thanos-snapped from the movie wasn’t even the funniest part—her mom had her own reason to be disappointed.
Her mom revealed exactly where her priorities were:
“I told my mom, and she was like, ‘That sucks―now I can’t post the pictures…’”
That social-media-ready mom is Isabel Celeste, a writer and singer of Afro-Puerto Rican and Afro-Cuban descent. When Dawson was young, Celeste helped reclaim an abandoned tenement building on East 13th Street in Manhattan’s East Village, transforming it into an affordable housing cooperative.
Celeste also fostered Dawson’s early artistic environment before the actor landed her breakout role in Kids after being discovered outside their East Village home.
Dawson wasted no time calling out her mom’s Marvel-sized priorities:
“And I was like, ‘Right mom, me being cut out of the movie that has the largest viewership of a trailer ever―the issue is you can’t post the BTS photos.’”
And can you blame her? Claire blends Marvel Comics’ Claire Temple with the comic book hero Night Nurse. Dawson played the fan-favorite nurse across Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders, making Claire a connective thread among Marvel’s battered New York heroes.
She also revealed one comic book detail that hits especially close to home:
“There’s a frame in one of the new comics that has, like, a young Spider-Man talking to Daredevil. And they made it so that the young Spider-Man goes to P.S. 19 in the Lower East Side, which is where I went to elementary school.”
The Lower East Side connection runs deep. Dawson spent much of her New York City childhood in a reclaimed building on East 13th Street in the Lower East Side/Alphabet City. She also lived in Garland, Texas, before returning to New York, where she was discovered as a teenager.
Turns out, those BTS photos weren’t just destined for Mom’s camera roll:
“So when I tell you my post was already ready with like my BTS, with my grandson wearing all his Spider-Man stuff, ’cause he loves Spider-Man.”
Dawson took the cut in stride, joking that she’s “a reject of Spider-Man.” Still, she found a silver lining in knowing Claire “is somewhere in that same universe, and I really love that. I hope I get to be Claire again.”
Watch Dawson tell the story below:
- YouTubeTrey Eversman
Maybe Mom will have better luck with the BTS photos on Dawson’s other projects. The actor is set to return in Ahsoka Season 2, star in the supernatural horror thriller Unmerciful Good Fortune, and headline Midnight alongside Milla Jovovich and Alexandra Shipp.
Dawson didn’t make the final cut, but her mom’s reaction certainly made an impression on fans:
Spider-Man: Brand New Day, meanwhile, hasn’t needed any help at the box office. The film became the fastest in history to cross $700 million domestically, hitting the milestone in 13 days and beating the 16-day record shared by Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avengers: Endgame.
The film also swung past Avengers: Endgame for the biggest domestic opening weekend with $360 million, crossed $500 million domestically in one week, and pulled in a record $74.5 million from previews.
Fingers crossed Dawson’s cameo swings into the deleted scenes—if only so her mom can finally post those BTS photos.
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