Tom Holland says his performance of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” on Lip Sync Battle nearly a decade ago still gets him “more compliments” than any of his film roles.The Spider-Man star was speaking to actor and comedian Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast when she brought up his 2017 Lip Sync Battle appearance alongside his Spider-Man: Homecoming co-star Zendaya, who performed Bruno Mars’s “24K Magic”. Holland’s routine on Lip Sync Battle, a celebrity competition series in which stars go head-to-head by performing lip-synced versions of popular songs, began with a performance of “Singin’ in the Rain” in a grey suit before transitioning to Rihanna’s “Umbrella” under artificial rain. Midway through the performance, he removed the suit to reveal fishnet tights, black shorts, a black vest, red lipstick and a short dark wig, before launching into a tightly choreographed dance routine.“I get more compliments for that dance than any piece of work I have ever done,” Holland told Poehler.Poehler replied that she had watched the clip “more than most movies”, and that she believed the performance continues to be popular because Holland appeared to be “comfortable with [his] feminine side”.“You’ve talked about it, being a young boy doing ballet, being a person who’s had to figure out what is typically male, what is typically female,” Poehler said, referring to Holland’s early dance training.Holland began dancing as a child and joined the West End production of Billy Elliot the Musical in 2008, first playing Billy’s friend Michael before taking on the title role later that year. He made his film debut in The Impossible in 2012 and broke through as Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War in 2016, before starring in Spider-Man: Homecoming the following year.“At one point in the dress rehearsal, the lady was like, ‘Do you think we could cut the shorts a little bit shorter?’” Holland recalled discussions about the outfit he wore for the performance.“I was like, ‘No. I’m doing enough. This is still years ahead of its time.’”Talking about the performance, Holland said he was “really excited”, albeit “nervous at the prospect of doing a live show and doing the dance and messing up the choreography”.However, he said he hadn’t spent any time thinking about how the audience would react to it before he actually started performing. Tom Holland says his performance of Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ on Lip Sync Battle from nearly a decade ago still gets him ‘more compliments’ than any of his film roles (MARVEL/Sony Pictures)“But it’s funny, it never really crossed my mind how it would be received,” he said. “I just thought, ‘Oh, what a fun idea. We’ll do this kind of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ thing.’“You felt the energy in the room literally deflate,” Holland said. “I started doing the thing in the suit and everyone in that audience is 19 years old and I was like, ‘What on earth is he doing?’ And I just knew in my body, when I take this suit off you are going to go nuts.’”Nearly a decade after it aired, the performance remains one of the most widely viewed clips from Lip Sync Battle. At the time of writing, Comedy Central’s video on YouTube had racked up more than 172.5m views. One of the most up-voted comments on the video reads: “This ain’t my first time here, and it ain’t gonna be my last.”In 2021, Holland shared that his father, writer and comedian Dominic Holland, tried to stop the performance from happening, out of concern it would destroy his career. “Look, I am really glad I did that show and I had a lot of fun,” Holland explained. “It was incredibly stressful. It has been incredibly successful and has been a really great thing for my career. But my dad always taught me when I was younger and coming up in the business that you want to get famous as slowly as possible.”