Tom Cruise’s big thing seems to be continuing to prove he can do all the stunt work, but the takeaway I get is of an artist stunted in his growth; a man frozen in another time of his life. Objectively I understand why he was tapped for the Olympics closing ceremony bit — where he rappelled down the Stade de France, then brought the Olympic flag to 2028 host city LA in a prerecorded video. It brought his movie star touch, considering the games are headed towards tinseltown. Now Casey Wasserman, president and chairperson of the LA28 committee, has divulged that Cruise chose to accept his mission almost immediately, and was happy to do it for free, no less. But only if he could do all his own stunts. Quelle surprise.
“The backstory is that we realized we were producing a 15-minute live TV show, and so I hired who I think is the best person in the world to do that,” Wasserman said at the CNBC x Boardroom: Game Plan in Santa Monica, Calif., this week, referring to producer Ben Winston, who had the idea to bring Cruise into the fold.
“The best part of the story is we pitched on a Zoom, and the original idea was a person in the stadium as a stunt double,” Wasserman continued. “We’re like, ‘Well, there’s no way we’re getting this. We’re going to get four hours of filming time. We’ll do the thing with the Hollywood sign, he’ll hand the thing off, and he’s done. Maybe we’ll get the other stuff and the rest will be just a stunt double.’”
To their surprise, Cruise agreed to the gig almost immediately, but not without setting the terms for his participation. Wasserman recalled, “About five minutes into the presentation, [Cruise] goes, ‘I’m in. But I’m only doing it if I get to do everything,’” effectively rejecting the idea of a stunt double and insisting on performing every aspect of the segment himself.
However, Wasserman said Winston told him, “Don’t get too excited. [Cruise] loves doing this stuff, but when his team realizes how many shooting days it’s going to be and rehearsals, this is never happening. I’m telling you I got it, but it’s never happening.”
But the Magnolia star proved them wrong. “Sure enough, every step of the way, he got more involved and more engaged,” Wasserman said.
In addition to participating for free, Cruise agreed to get involved in the Hollywood section of the segment during a particularly busy moment in his schedule, as he was still shooting the eighth Mission: Impossible movie across the pond.
“He finished filming Mission: Impossible at 6 p.m. in London, got right on a plane,” Wasserman recalled. “He landed in L.A. at 4 a.m. and filmed the scene where he pulls onto a military plane. In L.A., he does two jumps out of the [plane]. He didn’t like the first one, so he did a second jump. Then he helicoptered from Palmdale to the Hollywood sign, filmed from 1 until 5, helicoptered to Burbank Airport, and flew back to London.”
Tom Cruise is utterly confounding and vexing to me. On the one hand, he displays many admirable qualities: remembering friends and colleagues’ birthdays; showing up for female athletes; giving advice to filmmakers trying to navigate difficult Hollywood producers. On the other hand, he’s the VIP of a major global cult, a cult he’s so committed to that he chose his devotion to it over having a relationship with his daughter. But Top Gun: Maverick saved moviegoing, so… I recognize that Cruise is associated with a classic movie star charisma, that certain je ne sais quoi. And I also appreciate that he executed his bit of daredevil risky business for the Olympics perfectly. And while he wasn’t paid a fee for this gig, he did bank millions in favorable press and public goodwill. It gave him a positive counter-narrative to reports of his daughter dropping his last name as she goes off to college, and the reminder that he’s kept his eyes wide shut on her for 12 years.
Photos credit: Vincent Kalut/Panoramic/Avalon, Daniel Leal/Avalon and Getty
