Chinese actress Zhang Tianai voices Gwen Stacy in the madarin version of Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse.[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Zhang, who shot to prominence in the hit online series Go Princess Go, will voice the character of Gwen Stacy, who, in her reality, is the one who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and gains superpowers, becoming Spider-Woman.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is Zhang’s first animated movie voiceover, so, to improve her dialogue-speaking skills, Zhang trained herself to read a poem every night before falling asleep. She recorded the chants on her smartphone and repeatedly played them back to fine tune her emotion and tone as a voice actress.

As a longtime fan of comic books, Zhang says Spider-Man is one of her favorite comic superheroes and recalled her childhood experience of dressing up in a Spider-Man costume during a recent sneak preview of the film in Beijing, adding that it is like a dream come true to be part of the Spider-Verse.