It’s a rainy afternoon in the UK, and Tom Holland is taking a break from filming Spider-Man: Brand New Day. As we sit down to talk, the weather is so bad that filming has briefly been halted — but Holland has always had this date in the diary to discuss a rather different project entirely.
As of today, Holland stars in a new LEGO short film that promotes the importance of play, commissioned by the company as research shows children feel increasingly pressured to grow up fast. Never Stop Playing is a two-minute blast of live-action and LEGO animation designed by the LEGO Group but which also feels very Tom Holland, as it tasks the actor with embodying a varied and rapid-fire cast of characters — some of whom require more makeup than even his iconic Umbrella performance.
Holland first appears as a space marine, quickly realising he should never simply follow orders and abandon the fun of play. It’s a theme which continues throughout a whirlwind of other scenes, as Holland appears as a professional soccer player, an inventor, a senior citizen, a toddler, a LEGO minifigure, a goateed artist and then a grumpy executive.
In turn, the power of LEGO convinces each Tom Holland-played character to continue being playful — a message that Holland himself extolls when we discuss the film’s message after, as he explains why he’s taking a breather from playing Spider-Man to promote LEGO’s message instead.
“I think it really does help,” Holland tells IGN, when asked what the importance of play meant to him. “I have ADHD and I’m dyslexic, and I find sometimes when someone gives me a blank canvas that it can be slightly intimidating. And sometimes you are met with those challenges when developing a character.
“So any way that you can, as a young person or as an adult, interact with something that forces you to be creative and forces you to think outside the box and make changes that might be in an instruction manual or might not be in an instruction manual just promotes healthy creativity. And I think that the more we do that sort of stuff, the better.”
Holland says that, these days, his playtime also incorporates sports like golf and paddle tennis, and he plays online chess with his brother Harry, which helps them stay connected. But he has also had a long history of play with LEGO, he continues, from his childhood right up until his current Spider-Man era.
“We had so many different sets as kids, we were very lucky. I remember very vividly, our parents used to have these competitions for us where we would have to tidy up our rooms, and whoever tidied up the room the best would not have to wash the dishes that night or something. I had this LEGO set of dinosaurs and I would always stage them as part of my tidying process to kind of give my room that little bit of a creative edge over my brothers. And I look back on it really fondly.”
Tom’s siblings Harry and Sam make a cameo in the new LEGO film, as reporters asking whether their brother will continue playing as a soccer star. The ability to appear alongside them was another reason why he signed up for the gig, Holland says.
“They presented an opportunity of something that I could do with my brothers,” he says of the LEGO Group’s pitch, “which was really fun and not something that happens every day. Prada weren’t as keen to have Harry and Sam as Lego were,” he laughs, “but I’m a big fan of the LEGO Group. We grew up playing [with LEGO together].”
“We liked the LEGO Indiana Jones video game,” says Tom’s brother Harry, who has joined our conversation alongside Sam, “and LEGO Star Wars because it was one of the first games we had that you could play at the same time [in co-op]. A lot of our childhood was spent with massive arguments about whose turn it was to play the Xbox. So when we got [those] it was like, ‘oh wow, we can play this at the same time.’ And we’re very competitive as brothers. So rivalries were born on the LEGO battlefield, shall we say.”
Tom’s brother Sam, meanwhile, highlights the importance of physical LEGO sets, as a distraction from the increasingly digital world. “In a world where we’re surrounded by screens, it gets people off screens, it gets people talking to one another,” he says. “Growing up, I remember building all sorts of things.”
“It also teaches you about tidying up,” Tom then interjects. “Because if you don’t tidy up Lego, it can be dangerous for your parents’ bare feet.”
Rewind eight years, and Tom Holland’s love of LEGO is clear to see in another IGN interview where the actor masterfully re-enacts Spider-Man: Homecoming’s bank heist scene using a LEGO set. While Holland admitted he doesn’t still play with minifigures of himself (“No, I can’t say that I do”), the actor says his fondest LEGO memory is of building a LEGO Star Wars Death Star with his Homecoming co-star Jacob Batalon, who plays Peter Parker’s classmate Ned.
“I think my favorite memory of LEGO would be Spider-Man: Homecoming,” Holland recalls. “Jacob and I were becoming fast friends and our lives were being flipped upside down. And there’s that fantastic scene where Ned drops the LEGO Death Star and we were tasked by the studio to build one ourselves.”
Here, Holland is referring to the moment Ned finds out Peter is Spider-Man, and drops the 3,803-brick LEGO Death Star set in shock, sending it smashing into pieces.
“I just remember having really fond memories of sitting down with Jacob in my house, getting to know each other at the very beginning of this crazy journey,” Holland continues. “And it was rooted in making this LEGO Death Star, and we finished it. Our friend’s mom ended up helping us at one point, and I don’t think it is the one in the movie because they needed it to break in a certain way — so they built it without some of its infrastructure so that it would shatter better. But I remember that being a very, very poignant and fantastic time in that process.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
