Back in December when filming on Mission: Impossible 7 was finally getting back up and going, with strict protocols in place to prevent the spread and infection of COVID-19, Tom Cruise let some crew members know they weren’t taking it seriously enough. Audio of the incident leaked online, featuring choice lines like “If I see you do it again, you’re f***ing gone,” and according to one former co-star it lines up with the Tom Cruise that they knew. Though it seems like actor Jake Johnson, who appeared alongside Cruise in The Mummy, may not have been on the receiving end of a verbal lashing, the actor says that what he heard in the audio was the same intense man he worked with previously.
“Yeah, he’s an intense guy,” Johnson revealed to The Daily Beasts’ The Last Laugh podcast. “I mean, all he wants to do in a film — I cannot make any statements of the man outside of it because I don’t know him that well — but in terms of a filmmaker, he wants to entertain an audience, and if you’re not all about that, you’re gonna get knocked off the Bronco, because he is there to entertain an audience and he’s willing to really put himself in harm’s way to do it.”
The actor went on to give a solid example of Cruise’s intensity, relaying a story of their time on the box office bomb that taught him everything he needed to know about Tom Cruise’s work ethic.
“We jumped over buildings together that exploded. We were on a three-story building that collapsed and I landed on my back and told him that something went wrong because I got hurt. And he said, ‘Injured or hurt?’ I said, ‘What’s the difference?’ And he goes, ‘Can you go again or is something broken?’ And I was like, ‘No, I mean, I can go again.’ Then he goes, ‘So you’re hurt. Of course you’re hurt. You fell off a three-story building.’ And I thought, he’s not faking it. When you see him on a horse and he gets thrown off and he tucks and rolls, his back is bruised, but he loves the shot. When he’s holding onto a side of the plane and it takes off and that wind is hitting his face and it looks like it’s ripping his skin open….because it’s ripping his skin open.”
Tom Cruise can be seen in Mission: Impossible 7 next year.
(H/T THR)