Brendan Gleeson Calls Silvermane Scenes With Cage a Tennis Match
Brendan Gleeson said playing silvermane in Spider-Noir felt like trading shots with Nicolas Cage. The actor described their scenes as a “tennis match” and said the rivalry worked because both characters enjoyed the fight.
Silvermane and Ben Reilly
Gleeson plays the sharp-tongued antagonist Silvermane opposite Cage’s Ben Reilly, also known as The Spider. “The joust was always fun,” he said, adding, “So the joust was always fun and it felt that they knocked fun out of each other.”
He framed the clash as more than simple hostility: “Even though they were kind of sworn enemies, there was a mutual kind of enjoyment about getting into it with each other,” Gleeson said. He also compared the dynamic to “two boxers or something, big hug at the end. 'Even if I had to kill you, I love you to bits.'”
Nicolas Cage on Set
Gleeson said Cage brought that exchange to life with a style he called “very generous, very easy, very inventive, fearless, all that stuff.” He added that “there was a trust involved” and that when the pair clicked, “You just know when you can go have a little bit of a tennis match with this now and pitch it up back and forth, almost come back with a different spin on it and give back as good as you can.”
He said Cage’s Ben Reilly was “a bit of a chip off the old block [who] makes me laugh.” That mix of banter and friction gives Silvermane a clearer profile as a villain built for back-and-forth scenes rather than static menace.
Eight Episodes on Prime Video
Spider-Noir, based on the Spider-Man Noir comic book series, now has all eight episodes available to stream on Prime Video. The series also debuted domestically on MGM+’s linear broadcast channel and is offered in both “Authentic Black & White” and “True-Hue Full Color.”
The cast list around Gleeson and Cage includes Karen Rodriguez, Lamorne Morris, Abraham Popoola, Li Jun Li and Jack Huston. For viewers, the immediate takeaway is simple: Silvermane is not being introduced as a distant threat, but as a character designed to spar with Cage’s Spider across all eight episodes already on the platform.
