Tom Cruise Pranked Glen Powell by Pretending Their Helicopter Was Going Down
Tom Cruise really is a Maverick.
Glen Powell is sharing in a new interview with British GQ, published on Tuesday, May 28, how his Top Gun: Maverick costar played the ultimate prank on him while making the 2022 blockbuster.
Cruise, 61, flew Powell back to London from reshoots at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, in his helicopter when he pretended the aircraft was going down.
“Tom goes, ‘Oh no, oh no,’ and he starts dropping the helicopter over London,” Powell, 35, said. “I was like, ‘Am I about to be the unnamed guy that dies with Tom in a smoking hole in the middle of London?’”
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Powell said that he and Cruise bonded on set over their love of movies and Cruise even shared with him a private movie he made about filmmaking.
According to GQ, Cruise sent the Anyone But You star to an empty movie theater in L.A., where he watched Cruise speak directly to the camera for six hours about “everything he’s learned about filmmaking over the years.”
“He said, ‘This is just for my friends,’” Powell said of the film.
“[Cruise] is like: ‘Do we all agree that this is what a camera is? This is the difference between a film camera and a digital camera…’” Powell described the movie. “The funniest part is on flying. It was like he put together this entire flight school. So he would literally go ‘OK, this is what a plane is. Here’s how things fly. Here’s how air pressure works.’”
Back in November 2022, Powell revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that Cruise arranged for him to go skydiving for the first time — and it nearly turned fatal.
"It was actually my second date with my girlfriend," Powell said. "And when I got there, I found out that Tom's only request is that Glen cannot go skydiving with another person. He has to go solo the first time. So I literally have to jump out of this plane by myself."
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He continued, "But the worst part is that I couldn't find my tab when I was falling. It's the nightmare that everybody talks about. But my first thought — which is not, like, a selfless thought — but my first thought was, 'Oh, Tom just killed me. He's going to feel so bad.'"
"I was like, 'God, he pushed me to do this thing.' I'm looking for the tab and I'm like, 'You're not Tom Cruise. You'll never be Tom Cruise. Why did you do this?'” he added. “And then I finally pulled it. I was way below altitude, came in hot. Made it, went back up, did it again."
