Entertainment
Tom Holland’s iconic Rihanna Lip Sync Battle helped boy ‘who likes to wear girl’s clothes’ fight bullies
Spider-Man star Tom Holland has shared his pride in his iconic Lip Sync Battle helping a young boy face up to his bullies for wearing ‘girl’s clothes’.
The 24-year-old Marvel star became a viral sensation in 2017 for lip-syncing against co-star Zendaya to Rihanna’s Umbrella in a corset, heels and fishnets similar to the music video.
Since then, the joyous routine has been viewed more than 77million times on YouTube alone, and has triggered an ‘Umbrella Rule’ on Twitter, where anyone who sees it has to retweet it to shed some good spirits to their timeline.
But Tom has now revealed that the biggest thing to come from it was helping a child deal with bullies – because if Spider-Man can wear dresses, why couldn’t he?
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Tom said: ‘Lip Sync Battle is one of those things that’s kind of come back to haunt me a little bit. I get more compliments from dancing in the rain in fishnets than I do for anything I’ve done.
‘What I love about doing that show was, I remember I got a letter from a school teacher, telling me that there was a young boy in school who would prefer to dress in women’s clothing, and he was getting bullied at school for it.
‘He said to someone, he was like “well Spider-Man does it.”’
‘For me, I really relish in the idea that there was positivity that had coms from it because for me at the time I was just dancing on a TV show, and I felt like a bit of an idiot,’ he continued.
‘But I really look back on it fondly now, knowing that someone kind of took something from it and it was positive and helped someone deal with something.
‘So if you do watch my Lip Sync Battle, share it, like it, make it the biggest video on YouTube.’
Brb, watching this classic video on repeat forever.
The actor is currently at work on the third solo Spider-Man movie – where it’s been rumoured he could join forces with the previous stars of the franchise, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
While Tom has denied the reports, it’s claimed the trio will finally meet on screen as part of a look into Marvel’s Multiverse.
Tobey first played Peter Parker after 45-year-old from 2002 to 2004, and 37-year-old Andrew played the role from 2012 to 2014.
Tom made his debut in 2016 in Captain America: Civil War, followed by solo movie Homecoming the following year.
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