Why Tom Holland's Viral 'Lip Sync Battle' with Zendaya Almost Didn't Happen: 'Don't Think That's a Good Idea'

On a recent episode of Gordon Ramsay's Scrambled, the 29-year-old actor told the celebrity chef his father was cautious of Holland appearing on the celebrity competition show.

"When I told my dad, he was like, 'Son, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think you should do that,'" Holland told Ramsay as he stacked two burgers for the pair. "I think he was just, at that time in my career, he was very worried about me becoming too famous too quickly. So he was really keen for me to not do extra TV shows that I didn't have to do to try and maintain that part of my childhood."

Holland's 2017 rendition of a "Singin' in the Rain" x "Umbrella" mashup was and still is beloved by audiences around the world -- amassing 166 million views on YouTube.

"Honestly, of all the pieces of work I've done that I've put my heart and soul into blood sweat and tears, the Lip Sync Battle is the thing that everyone brings up. It's never Spiderman, it's never any of my other movies," Holland admitted, before jokingly adding the performance "haunts" him.

He battled against his now-fiancée, Zendaya, with both of them agreeing not to do anything too crazy beforehand.

"It's so funny, Zendaya and I, we were chatting at the time about what we were gonna do, and we had agreed that we would take it easy," he said. "That was the agreement, that it was like, 'I'm not gonna do anything crazy, you're not gonna do anything crazy, we're just gonna keep it nice and easy breezy.'"

However, it's clear Holland didn't hold up his end of the deal.

"When I was working with the creative team coming up with the ideas, they kind of pitched this 'Umbrella' thing, and as we were rehearsing, it got crazier and crazier," he explained. "And then the rain machine came in. And then I was like, 'F--k it, I wanna wear fishnets and do this, and I want a wig and a quick-change.'"

Ramsay wondered if they were Holland's "mum's fishnets."

"They were my granny's, actually," Holland quipped back.

Zendaya subtly announced her engagement to Holland earlier this year when she stepped out at the Golden Globes with a diamond ring on her finger. According to TMZ, Tom asked for Zendaya’s father’s approval and then popped the question over the holidays in a “romantic and intimate” proposal.

The couple have been together since 2021 after meeting on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming. They've kept much of their relationship private but they've often appeared on red carpets together and have traveled the world together.