While Marvel characters have gotten many iterations over the years thanks to various films, when it comes to J. Jonah Jameson, the fictional media man has had been played consistently by JK Simmons for two decades, first in Sam Raimi 's Spider-Man and, most recently in Spider-Man: No Way Home . It's a role that has become one of the actor's most iconic in his career and now, Simmons is looking back on it speaking with GQ , explaining that Spider-Man co-creator, Stan Lee even confessed to him that he was jealous he wasn't asked to play the part -- but that Lee approved of Simmons' portrayal.
"I had never met Stan and didn't even know, and this is kind of obvious to anyone who's really paying attention or is smarter than I am, but JJJ was kind of based on Stan, the comic version of himself," Simmons said. "He confessed to me at the time that, you know, he was a little jealous that they didn't ask him to play the part in the movie, but 'having seen you do it, I thought you were fantastic.' Very, very nice things, which obvious, coming from The Man, was a great, great compliment."
He went on to talk about bringing J. Jonah Jameson into the MCU through Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies, explaining that he was surprised that they wanted to bring in a version that didn't have the character's trademark flat-top hairstyle.
"I don't even know whose idea it was, if it was Amy [Pascal, Sony producer] or Jon [Watts, Spider-Man: Far From Home director], if it was somebody else... 'hey, we could squeeze in a little J. Jonah Jameson here, I mean, why not get JK and see if he'll do it,'" he said. "Of course I was intrigued by the idea. 'And you know, we're not going to do the flat-top, and the moustache, and the cigar' and I was like... what? That's like half of the guy! Trying to wrap my brain around that."
He went on to explain that they explained it to him that they wanted to modernize the franchise and that his original portrayal had been so iconic and like a period piece, but Simmons pitched that he wanted to keep the cigar and moustache as well as the general color -- but he still wonders if the hair choice came down to having enough time to get a wig made.
Will J. Jonah Jameson Be in Spider-Man 4 ?
At this point, it's too soon to even speculate if we'll see Simmons return as J. Jonah Jameson for Spider-Man 4. There aren't very many details about a fourth installment of Holland's Spider-Man franchise just yet, though Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige did recently say that he and Pascal are working on it.
"Amy and I are working on it," Feige said. "We have writers who are going to be delivering us a draft relatively soon."
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