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Coming from the highly secretive and fan-obsessed world of Severance, Tramell Tillman certainly knows how to play the spoiler-free game in interviews, but he’s not always so used to being in the dark on the other side of those conversations. As such, his early experiences when joining the cast of Spider-Man: Brand New Day sound like he was trying to get into some kind of highly classified government outpost, like Area 51. (Or wait, was that just Venom?)
With Brand New Day already having earned more than $2 billion at the box office, Tillman can now speak more freely about his previously under-wraps role of Department of Damage Control’s unsettlingly calm boss Bill Metzger, Speaking with GQ about landing the role, among other details, Tillman said he was initially excited to be told that Marvel execs wanted to meet with him, but that excitement was temporarily tamped down by a lack of pertinent information. In his words:
So they set up a meeting with Destin, and I’m pretty sure I had to sign NDAs even before that conversation happened. It was a little frustrating, because everything was shrouded in secrecy. So I wasn’t even sure specifically how the character would fit into the world of the movie, and I’m pretty sure they had to play their cards very close to the chest because they weren’t sure if I was going to accept it.
That sounds like the most interesting version of a near-stalemate, with Tramell Tillman not so eager to accept an offer for a role he knows nothing about, and director Destin Daniel Cretton & Co. not so eager to divulge any information about a role that Tillman wasn’t automatically ready to sign off on. Is it still called ouroboros if you’re talking about a spider eating its own legs?
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Tillman revealed how he and the director finally reached an agreement when the bare minimum of insight was shared with him. In his words:
So we’re kind of playing this back-and-forth game where I’m asking Destin, ‘Well, what can you tell me?’ And Destin would say, ‘It’s this and that, but I can’t say anything more than that.’ But he told me it was a pivotal role, and that’s about it. So this was a leap of faith. Do I want to jump at this opportunity or do I want to hold off and wait for another potential opportunity from Marvel?
I can certainly understand Tillman’s hesitance to just dive into a blockbuster role like this without having a clear idea of who he’ll be playing. To be sure, I doubt Kevin Feige and Cretton ever had him in mind to play Tombstone or Scorpion or any of the more action-based villains. Not because I don’t think he could do it or anything, but because he’s so good at oozing menace while doing nothing beyond just standing in an office in dapper clothing. His gravitas was worth the creative team’s effort of stringing him along with minor details.
Specifically, this is the character foundation that Tillman started to develop his performance around when agreeing to take the role. As he put it:
The description we landed on was that he’s a corporate guy but also a bit of a politician. And that gave me a lot to feed on and break ground on the role.
Will Bill Metzger show up in any upcoming Marvel movies to spread the Department of Damage Control’s influence out across the rest of the MCU? The only thing that’ll apparently answer that question with efficiency is time, and possibly a lot of it, since he’s not automatically expected to be popping up in Avengers: Doomsday.
Tillman himself, however, is co-starring in one of my more anticipated upcoming 2026 movies of the fall, Bassam Tariq’s crime thriller Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother opposite Mahershala Ali and Giancarlo Esposito. In the meantime, Brand New Day will no doubt continue to crush it at the box office, and I’ll be one of many waiting more Severance Season 3 production updates.