Tom Holland is opening up about the most viral moment of his career on Lip Sync Battle.
Back in 2017, the Spider-Man: Homecoming actor dressed up as Rihanna and performed a sultry dance routine to the singer’s hit song “Umbrella” as he took on now-fiancée Zendaya on the hit show.
Fast-forward to eight years later, and Holland, 29, recently told Gordon Ramsay that the viral moment — which has over 160 million views on YouTube — is “the thing everyone brings up … it’s never Spider-Man.”
The British actor quipped that the fishnet tights he wore during the performance “were my granny’s, actually,” when Ramsay, 58, asked him whether he borrowed them from his mom during an episode of the celebrity chef’s Scrambled YouTube series.
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Holland recalled how he and Zendaya, 28, initially agreed to keep their performances low-key, but Holland’s routine became more and more elaborate during rehearsals. (Zendaya performed Bruno Mars’ “24K Magic.”)
“So funny, Zendaya and I, we were chatting at the time about what we were gonna do. We had agreed we would take it easy,” he explained. “That was the agreement, that it was like, ‘I’m not going to do anything crazy. You’re not going to do anything crazy. We’re just gonna keep it nice and easy breezy.’ And then when I was working with the creative team coming up with ideas, they kind of pitched this ‘Umbrella’ thing and as we were rehearsing, it got crazier and crazier. And then the rain machine came in.”
“I was like, ‘F*** yeah, I wanna wear fishnets and do this. I want a wig and a quick-change and stuff,’” Holland added.
The Cherry actor also revealed that his father, writer and comedian Dominic Holland, initially warned him against the performance.
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“When I told my dad, he was like, ‘Son, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t think you should do that,’” Tom said.
He continued, “I was like, ‘No, Dad, it’ll be really fun. I’m going to have a good time.’ At that time in my career, he was very worried about me becoming too famous too quickly. So he was really keen for me to not do extra TV shows that I didn’t have to do to try and maintain that part of my childhood.”
Tom and Zendaya, whose engagement was confirmed in January, are set to appear in two movies together in 2026: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which entered production this week, and the Christopher Nolan–directed epic The Odyssey.
