Tom Holland discusses beer tasting with Zendaya and the joy of sobriety
CityAM’s Deputy Life&Style editor Adam Bloodworth spoke to the actor Tom Holland about the joys of alcohol free living
Like when David Beckham became more synonymous with sarongs and buzz cuts than football, Tom Holland has gone on to symbolise so much more than Spider-Man. A legion of young men follow his every sartorial move; earlier this year, his ‘blokecore’ short back-and-sides cut for Romeo & Juliet briefly became as much a part of the Gen Z uniform as cargo pants.
But Holland has always been laser-focused on making movies. “My fashion sense is so bad that no one would have ever bought the clothes,” he told me recently when we spoke about the idea of collaborations.
That was until 2024, twelve years into his career, when Holland found another calling. His venture into brewing has become such a significant part of his life that it’s the only thing mentioned in his social media bio. Forget the Blockbusters, all his Instagram namechecks is “@berobrewing founder.”
Tom Holland on alcohol free living: it’s massively improved my golf!
When he was younger, an average weekend involved “sitting in the pub and drinking myself silly,” he told me when I led a discussion at a launch event for his alcohol free beer company Bero in Wimbledon.
But Holland went sober three years ago after finding that getting tanked up didn’t help him overcome social anxiety, and was only masking insecurities. He has become a role model for the rise in people, particularly young people, who aren’t drinking alcohol. “When I got sober I was really passionate about this idea of bettering my life, self help and wellness, so it felt like a perfect fit,” he says. “People are exercising more, focusing on their health, and you know, it’s a slight contradiction to do all those things – to go to the gym, eat healthy – and then drink 25 beers in the evening.”
It’s no secret that I really struggled with alcohol
Holland didn’t want to feature on the packaging, but one of the beers – there are four currently available – is named after his hometown of Kingston, and designs on the cans incorporate the official colours of his school. “It’s no secret that I really struggled with alcohol,” he said at the event. “In my first year of sobriety I was trying all these non-alcoholic beers and alcoholic replacements and I could never really find something that scratched the itch, that made me feel included in the nightlife experience. We started going back and forth on what we thought was missing in the category of non alcoholic beers and then Bero was born.”
“We’re not trying to compete with alcohol, we’re not trying to encourage people to not drink, we’re just offering people the opportunity to moderate. To have something that is the in-between beer or the Tuesday night beer or an office lunch beer. We really are keen to not say stop drinking.”
Holland set up Bero with business partner John Herman, who has 30 years of experience in scaling companies. He interviewed a range of potential collaborators, but Herman was the clear partner. “I am in no way shape or form a businessman,” Holland told me. “I sit in our board meetings and contribute absolutely nothing.
Tom Holland: I have a gripe – I’m not invited to the Bero board meetings
“I have a gripe with John, I haven’t been invited to this quarter’s board meeting. I just really wanted to work with someone who was gonna help me understand the process and the building blocks required to building something like this. John has been incredibly patient with me. To me they sound like stupid questions, but we’re great mates and we’ve been working together daily for the past nearly two years.”
Other than the flex of enjoying an office lunchtime beer, Tom Holland says Bero has “massively” improved his golf. “I can say that confidently, that is a fact,” he says. “Back in the day when I was playing badly I would drink, and the worse I would play the more I would drink, and the more I would drink the worse I would get. Now when I play with my friends and they’re all drinking on the course, I’m stone cold sober, super focused and refreshed at the same time. Having a Bero on a golf buggy at a golf course with my friends is a dream come true.”
We’re speaking from a suburban home in Wimbledon hired for the day by Chase Travel, who are working in partnership with Holland. It’s a mild summer morning and the 29-year-old has been playing tennis on a small court in the garden. It’s all with the aim of aligning the beer brand with an aspirational sportsluxe lifestyle. Following Challengers starring his fiancé Zendaya, the ‘Tenniscore’ trend, all about encapsulating the culture of tennis in our lifestyles, has grown significantly.
‘I’m an actor, I’d make it all about me’
Wearing a black cardigan with miniature Bero bottles as the buttons, he grins when we start talking about tennis. He’s effusive about “incredible” João Fonseca, the 18-year-old Brazilian who debuted at Wimbledon, and nostalgic about his childhood, when his mother would send him and his younger brothers to queue for day tickets, a quintessential British tradition. People arrive the night before and the queue can take eight hours. “I remember as kids doing that every year, mum sort of just kicking us out of the house,” he said. As a schoolboy at Donhead Preparatory School in Wimbledon, Holland tried out to be a ball boy at the Championships, but never landed the gig. “I was very sad about that,” he said. “I went for it every year and I never made it. I’m not good enough at catching and I’ve got serious ADHD and they have to stand still for a long time. As I’m an actor, I’m an attention seeker so I would have been trying to make it all about me.”
He still lives in Kingston, and when he’s at home he passes Bero samples around to friends and family to test out new flavours. “Zendaya’s my good marker,” he says. “She doesn’t like beer so if she doesn’t like it, I’m like, ‘Okay that’s good,’ because that means it tastes like beer!”
There’s one parallel with his day job: Holland finds brewing surprisingly creative when it comes to finessing flavour, even though he says he doesn’t know about the intricacies of brewing. “I just know what I like and what I don’t like,” he says. “Grant [the Bero brewmaster] has been our superpower in that he can interpret our needs, wants and desires and turn them into these fantastic products. Sometimes I’m like, ‘I don’t know what I don’t like about it, but this is what I’m missing,’ and he’s so good at taking those thoughts and turning them into something fantastic.”
A little beer therapy session then, it sounds like? “Yeah!”
Find Tom Holland’s beer at berobrewing.com