Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell reveals Tom Cruise paid for his real-life pilot training. Superstar Tom Cruise is gearing up to return to two of his most beloved properties in the next few years, Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible 7 and 8, which will release back to back in 2021 and 2022. First up, though, is Top Gun: Maverick, which sees Cruise’s Peter “Maverick” Mitchell return, over thirty years later, and as seen in the trailers, the character still feels the “need for speed,” but now he is also helping teach a new batch of fighter pilots. The sequel will see Cruise’s character take on somewhat of a mentor role, and will bring in new faces such as Miles Teller, who plays the son of Goose, and Powell.
Powell was first in-competition with Teller for the role of Goose’s son. Ultimately, Teller was cast as Bradley, but a report suggested that producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the team at Paramount were so impressed with Powell, that they cast him as the character Hangman, and reportedly made his part in the film bigger as well. The Top Gun sequel is said to be “a love letter to aviation,” and fans know how keen Cruise is to ensure things are done practically in his films, so the actors in this sequel had to be able to handle conditions of flying in the F/A-18 fighter jets. However, Powell not only got inspired by Cruise’s ability to fly a fighter jet; he also got a helping hand from the star himself to “Feel the need.”
In an Instagram post by Powell, he revealed that “after falling in love” with aviation from filming Top Gun 2, his co-star Cruise paid for his flight school training. In a long post, Powell said: “After wrapping a shooting day, Tom would rocket off into the sunset in his P-51 while I would limply shuffle into the cast van. The wings were just so much cooler than the wheels... and for Christmas, Tom bought me an iPad with my flight school downloaded and prepaid.” Now, according to Powell, he is “the real deal,” and along with his words, there is a video of him with his instructor after his first solo flight.
Cruise is famous for being an incredible co-star, as not only does he fully invest himself in his stunts and roles, he is known for ensuring his co-stars are also ready and able for the often intense rigors they have to go through shooting his style of films. However, this latest gesture simply takes the superstar's stock even higher, as it is an incredibly kind gesture that Cruise did not have to do for Powell, and what’s even nicer, is at the very end of Powell’s post, he thanks Cruise for being his “hype man every step of the way.”
The only unfortunate aspect of this news of Powell becoming “the real deal” is it has come after shooting for Maverick has wrapped. Meaning, fans will likely not get to see Powell try his hand out in flying one of the fighter jets like Cruise is so famous for doing in his films. However, with Top Gun: Maverick now coming slightly earlier than initially expected, fans will get to see if one of Cruise’s most popular films can still thrive today, and if it does pass the test at the box office, we could perhaps see Powell with his new skill set return for another installment.
Source: Glen Powell/Instagram
