David Krumholtz campaigned to play The Thing in The Fantastic Four — and now aims to play a different Marvel character

David Krumholtz is a massive comic book fan — so he took it upon himself to manifest his clobberin’ time to shine.

The Oppenheimer and Santa Clause star, who spoke to EW about his upcoming film Lousy Carter, revealed that he campaigned for the role of Ben Grimm/The Thing in The Fantastic Four. “It's been a big, sort of unabashedly craven goal of mine to be part of the MCU in some way. I met [director] Matt Shakman for Ben Grimm,” he tells EW.

Krumholtz thinks that his brief online campaign to join the project secured the meeting with the upcoming film's director. “I only met him on the strength of a Twitter post or an Instagram post that I then took down two hours after I posted it,” he says. “I was embarrassed. My post said, ‘I just want to be in the conversation.’ And it was a picture of the Thing, and Matt saw it somehow. And I had a meeting with him and we discussed it. And I've never been so bold in a meeting before, just begging for the role, just straight up selling the s--- out of it, the idea of how committed and passionate I was for it. But obviously that didn't happen.”

The actor’s passion for the role comes from a lifelong comic book fandom. “I grew up reading Marvel comics. It was all I read,” he says. “I wasn't a big DC guy. I just read Marvel and it became an obsession. I even worked at a comic book store before I became an actor, and I got paid in comics. I was 11. So when Marvel started making films, it was mind-blowing. I remember thinking when I was a kid reading these comics that these would be amazing films, but they couldn't do them. There wasn't the technology to do them properly. And suddenly there was, and suddenly they were getting it all right. And they were true to the costumes and true to every little detail.”

Krumholtz has no ill will toward The Bear star Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who was officially announced as the MCU’s Ben Grimm last week. “I think Ebon Moss-Bachrach is a really great choice,” he says. “It makes way more sense in some ways.”

Now, Krumholtz has his sights set on another Fantastic Four character: the villainous Mole Man, who served as the antagonist in the super quartet’s very first comic book issue in 1961. “It’s not a joke at all,” Krumholtz says of his recent social media post campaigning for Mole Man. “I mean, it's a shoe-in for Mole Man, isn't it? But I don't know. I'll do anything Marvel tells me to. I'll probably end up playing like a superhero's therapist. Let's face it. There's slim pickings for guys like me in that world, unfortunately. I'm old and I'm not in any kind of acceptable shape. So we'll see how that works out, if it works out at all.”

Krumholtz’s new indie dramedy Lousy Carter hits theaters and on-demand platforms March 29. Watch the first trailer here.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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