A new interview with Graham Phillips, Harry Osborn’s actor in Spider-Man 2

Graham Phillips did an interview with Behind the Voice a couple of days ago and it’s very interesting indeed.

He goes into a lot of detail about Harry’s personality and arc in the game (“He just wants to be free”) as well as the auditioning and filming process. (Apparently, there were three different fates filmed for Harry! Wow, I’d love to see the other ones some day.) But arguably the most interesting bit was this:

As you can imagine, Parksborn Tumblr went WILD! I did too!

I do know though that this isn’t really a confirmation of anything. It’s really more of an in-joke between the actors than anything else. And that’s fine, everyone is going to have their own interpretation of a story, be it one they helped create or one they engaged with.

But me personally, I just absolutely love the queer, romantic interpretation of the Peter/Harry story, be it the one in the comics or the one in the game. It just adds this amazing extra layer onto things, and onto both of their relationships with Norman as well.

(From Amazing Spider-Man #598)

616-verse Norman would not, after all, have accepted an LGBT son in a thousand years, unless he was looking at a way to exploit him. He already spent a lot of time trying to mold Harry into his own idea of manhood, something Harry tries to live up to but is only made miserable by: it’s embracing his love for Peter that makes him happy in the end.

None of this is anything to do with the thought of anyone having sex, by the way, I am incredibly asexual when it comes to fictional characters. I just like to look at the puzzle pieces which make up a story and go, “but what if this puzzle piece was actually this? Would that be saying something new about these characters? About the world they were created in?”

And I have to say that the tide of “Why does everything have to be WOKE, LGBT people don’t have to be in EVERY GAME” that I saw after that interview dropped is extremely disappointing (and, y’know, inaccurate, since Black Cat has a girlfriend in the game anyway) but not really surprising, which is a pretty clear indication of why there needs to be more queer stories in games and comics.


Oh, and you can check out the harry-peter tumblr for more on, well, Harry and Peter. I’ve maintained that tumblr for OVER TEN YEARS now! There’s lots of really great reblogs on it that explain the appeal of the relationship much better than I can.

6 thoughts on “A new interview with Graham Phillips, Harry Osborn’s actor in Spider-Man 2

  1. I would love to see the other fates for Harry too. Also I think they should explore the Harry/Peter/MJ dynamic more the chemistry is insane. The romantic interpretation of Peter and Harry is so interesting from a storytelling, lore and characterization perspective and should not be completely dropped in future games hopefully. Finally they are incredible actors and actually made me tear up a few times.

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    1. Spoilers another dynamic that should be explored is Harry and MJ’s. MJ’s excitement that he was back in the beginning, Harry calling her hugs MJ hugs, the fact that after Venom/Peter chased her I think it was implied she went to Harrys house instead of her own, Her saying that Venom isn’t the real him and her putting her hand on his head when she thought they lost him. On the other side Harry as Venom sought her out to get to both her and Peter and I don’t know if that was meant to be glossed over or if I am reading too much into it.

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  2. Spoiler warning I think the final fight confirms that Harry was not in control at all once he took back Venom and that MJ and Peter were aware of this, please correct me if I am wrong.

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