Robert Downey Jr. roasted Gwyneth Paltrow for not recognizing one of her MCU co-stars, despite appearing alongside him in several different movies.
Paying tribute to Paltrow at The Hollywood Reporter’s ‘Women in Entertainment’ gala on Wednesday, Downey Jr. playfully mocked his longtime on-screen love interest for being “impossibly intelligent, yet forever confused by the basic tenets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its inhabitants.”
“‘Who’s that? He said his name was Peter,’” Downey Jr. recalled Paltrow once asking him on set. “‘That’s Spider-Man,’” he replied. “‘He said his name was Peter’. ‘His character’s name is Peter. He’s Tom Holland. You’ve done four movies with him.’”
The incident is not the first time Paltrow has gone on record as not understanding the ‘basic tenets’ of the sprawling superhero franchise, or even what movies her character, Pepper Potts, had appeared in.
During a 2019 interview with fellow Marvel alumni John Favreau, the actor had to remind Paltrow that they both appeared in Spider-Man: Homecoming after the Oscar-winning actress drew a blank and seemed not even to remember the film’s name.
“Remember, we were on Spider-Man?” Favreau asked Paltrow during an appearance on The Chef Show.
“We weren’t in Spider-Man,” she replied, prompting Favreau and co-host Roy Choi to attempt to jog her memory. “I was in Avengers.”
After some back and forth, the penny finally dropped when Favreau described her scene in the 2017 blockbuster.
“Remember Spider-Man in the end and Tom Holland’s there, and you’re going to walk out and do a press conference?” he asked.
“Oh yes!” Paltrow replied. “That was Spider-Man? Oh my God!” The actress later confessed to Jimmy Kimmel that she’d never seen the movie.
Tom Holland isn’t the only MCU star that Paltrow has blanked on, either—Back in 2019, Marvel chief Kevin Feige revealed that the actress appeared confused as to why Samuel L. Jackson was on set when the cast united to film the famous funeral scene at the end of Avengers: Endgame.
“Gwyneth Paltrow was asking why Sam Jackson was there, and the other actors were jumping in, saying, ‘What are you talking about? He’s Nick Fury! You’ve been in movies with him!”
Back at the Hollywood Gala, Downey Jr. praised Paltrow for her tireless work ethic, crediting her for “building Goop between takes on the set of Iron Man” and for “introducing the planet to the possibility of ‘conscious uncoupling’—remember that?—which Hollywood has done a great job not emulating.”
Welcoming her to the stage where she was set to receive a reward for women in leadership, Downey Jr. concluded by praising the actress for her “moral strength, intestinal fortitude, not to mention her impeccably tasteful, civil suit chic-yet-practical courtroom attire.”
“It’s time to recognize… Gwyneth fuggin’ Paltrow,” he concluded.
Contrary to Downey Jr’s claims, Paltrow and Holland have only officially appeared in three Marvel movies together: Captain America: Civil War, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Avengers: Endgame.
Paltrow technically made an appearance in a scene from Spider-Man: Far From Home, but this was comprised of archive footage from Civil War and did not feature any additional scenes.
