Andrew Garfield has admitted that keeping his Spider-Man: No Way Home cameo a secret was both “stressful,” and “weirdly enjoyable”.

The actor, 38, spent months shooting down speculation that he was going to be in the latest superhero flick, so much so that it almost became like second nature to him.

“It was like this massive game of Werewolf that I was playing with journalists and with people guessing, and it was very fun,” he told TheWrap.

Werewolf for those not yet initiated, is a game that involves a group of people where some are secret “werewolves” tasked with hiding their identity from the others.

“Like anyone who’s played the game Werewolf knows, if you are the werewolf your heart kind of sinks because you know you have a stressful couple of hours ahead of you,” Garfield continued. “You’re gonna have to lie to your friends’ faces and try to convince them that you are not the bad guy in the game... But it was thrilling, actually.

“There were moments where I was like, ‘God, I hate lying.’ I don’t like to lie and I’m not a good liar, but I kept framing it as a game. And I kept imagining myself purely as a fan of that character, which is not hard to do,” he added to the publication.

Recalling how his heart had sank when he saw a leaked picture showing him with fellow secret squirrel Tobey Maguire, he said: “I worked so hard to keep it a secret that I was in Atlanta shooting. All these leaks were happening, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, guys, what the hell is going on? I’m working so hard here to stay secret, and then here’s an image of me with Tobey!’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, we’re gonna keep it quiet.’ ‘OK, I’ll keep denying it.’

His hard work appears to have paid off in the end though. Not only were fans delighted to see both him and Maguire on screen as Spider-Man again in a mind-bending multiverse-fueled plot, Spider-Man: No Way Home swiftly became the highest grossing movie of 2021.