“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” star Michael Mando reveals that he was homeless during early career: ‘I felt so s---ty’
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” star Michael Mando reveals that he was homeless during early career: ‘I felt so s---ty’
Wesley StenzelThu, July 30, 2026 at 1:00 AM UTC
0
Michael Mando in Los Angeles on July 27, 2026Credit: Amy Sussman/GettyKey points -
Michael Mando said that he was homeless during the early chapter of his acting career.
“I used to take a bus from Montreal to Toronto overnight. I used to shower at the YMCA, go do an audition, and then take the bus back,” he said.
Mando said that he “felt so s---ty in my life so many times.”
Michael Mando is reflecting on the struggles of his early acting career.
The Better Call Saul star, who plays the Scorpion in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day, said that he was homeless as a young man during an interview with the I’ve Never Said This Before podcast.
“I was homeless when I started my acting career,” Mando recalled. “I used to shower at the YMCA. I used to take a bus from Montreal to Toronto overnight. I used to shower at the YMCA, go do an audition, and then take the bus back.”
Mando said that he used to “hop” from one friend’s apartment to another. “I remember in the winter, I got kicked out of my friend’s apartment because I overslept and I burnt his sheets by accident on the heater,” he remembered. “And he’s like, ‘Man, you got to go. We can’t both sleep on a small mattress.’ And then I rented this place in this kind of rough part of Toronto. And it was so small, the drawer wouldn’t open because it would hit the single bed.”
The Orphan Black actor reflected on the feelings of rejection that he’s experienced throughout his career. “I felt so s---ty in my life so many times,” he said. “I felt small, I felt unwanted, I felt untalented, I felt hopeless, and that’s just a part of the human experience.”
However, Mando still remembers his early career with some fondness. “I was happy because I was doing what I loved,” he said. “To everyone out there, if you’ve been broke, if you’ve been homeless, if you thought that there’s no way out, of course I felt it. And I can promise you almost every single great person, actor, anyone you’ve ever met has felt it. It’s not just you, everybody feels it.”
Advertisement
Michael Mando in ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’Credit: Jay Maidment/Marvel
Mando previously played Mac Gargan, the criminal who eventually becomes the Scorpion, in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. The actor said that his character was originally supposed to have a bigger role in that first Spider-Man film.
“I had a scene in the middle of that film that was cut,” he said. “I received a really nice handwritten letter from somebody high up saying how much they liked the scene, and I was really excited for it.”
Mando didn’t know that the scene was edited down prior to watching the final cut for the first time. “I remember bringing my father to the premiere,” he recalled. “That scene came and went, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute!’ I didn’t know it was going to be cut.”
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
The actor said that having that key scene cut down was a valuable lesson for him. “That was a learning moment for me as an actor,” he said. “And I think the trick is you just take it in stride, you take it in love, and you say, ‘What’s meant to be is meant to be,’ and it’s okay.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters on Friday.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
