'Top Gun: Maverick' - Cast Interview
"Top Gun: Maverick”
CinemaBlend had to talk with Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, joined by stars Charles Parnell, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez and Greg “Tarzan” Davis about the epic sequel to the 1980s classic. Watch as they discuss some of their favorite moments with Tom Cruise, the surprise and anxiety of flying in real jets, when they realized "Top Gun: Maverick” had become a global phenomenon, and so much more.
CinemaBlend had to talk with Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, joined by stars Charles Parnell, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez and Greg “Tarzan” Davis about the epic sequel to the 1980s classic. Watch as they discuss some of their favorite moments with Tom Cruise, the surprise and anxiety of flying in real jets, when they realized "Top Gun: Maverick” had become a global phenomenon, and so much more.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 It's like a mountain that keeps growing.
00:02 People were still coming out in crazy, crazy numbers.
00:04 I was like, "There's no way."
00:06 You feel it in the air, and we're all like,
00:08 "This is definitely really special."
00:10 That's when I realized it was headed for something big.
00:13 That's an experience you'll never have in your life.
00:15 And we're off.
00:18 Combat medals, citations,
00:27 only man to shoot down three enemy planes in the last 40 years.
00:30 Yet here you are.
00:32 What is that?
00:34 Well, Tom felt that Maverick was an iconic character in his filmography.
00:40 And if he was going to make a sequel, it had to hit a bullet with a bullet.
00:45 And Joe Kaczynski came up with an idea that we'd been toying around with,
00:49 but Joe kind of capsulated it.
00:51 We flew to Paris while Tom was making Mission Impossible.
00:56 And Joe had a lookbook and sat down with Tom and said,
01:00 "Here's a story I want to tell, and here's what it's going to look like."
01:04 And Tom looked at him and said, "Look, Joe, we're going to make this.
01:06 We're going to make it real.
01:08 I want everybody in those planes.
01:10 I want to feel it."
01:11 And Joe said, "That's the only way I want to make it."
01:12 And Tom picked up his phone and called the head of the studio at the time,
01:18 said, "I want to make another Top Gun."
01:19 And of course, they were delighted.
01:21 Your reputation precedes you.
01:25 I have to admit, I wasn't expecting an invitation back.
01:27 Oh, God, there's a lot of good memories working with Tom Cruise.
01:30 The first thing that comes to mind is my very first day.
01:33 It kind of encapsulates him.
01:35 So my first day was a speech that I make,
01:37 that Warlock makes introducing Maverick to the new students.
01:42 And he wasn't supposed to be there that day.
01:44 I do the speech a few times on camera.
01:46 We do a few takes, and everybody's used to relaxing after I'm done
01:49 because we're going to cut there and he's going to shoot his another day.
01:52 I'm about to go again.
01:54 I see some activity behind a curtain, and it's him getting dressed.
01:57 And they're like, "OK, do it this time.
01:58 He's going to actually come in."
02:00 The other actors didn't know.
02:02 I introduced him.
02:04 Now, mind you, I hadn't met him because I missed the table read because I was working.
02:08 So this was my day to meet him.
02:09 I thought I was going to meet him in a few days, but there he was.
02:11 And we didn't even say hi.
02:13 I did the scene again.
02:14 He walks up, just like the way you see in the movie,
02:16 and you hear his footsteps.
02:19 And I've been wondering if that's the take they used,
02:22 because everybody kind of stiffened in their chair when they realized that somebody was
02:26 actually coming and weren't cutting.
02:27 And then he did his speech.
02:28 So I'm watching Maverick live, standing there on the side.
02:31 And then he just drops off and goes, "Charles, how are you?
02:34 Welcome to set.
02:35 I'm Tom."
02:35 And so I met Maverick Tom at the same moment, and that was pretty wild.
02:41 That's my first huge memory.
02:44 But I have a lot of great memories working with him because he's great.
02:46 He was great to me.
02:47 He's great to the cast.
02:48 He's relentlessly positive.
02:51 He keeps your spirits up.
02:53 He keeps you feeling good about what you're doing the whole time.
02:55 So it just lifts the whole spirit of the movie.
02:58 All right.
02:59 That was awesome.
03:00 The thing that kind of took down this veil of--
03:04 he's a superhuman already.
03:05 So I think he's genuinely somebody that is a superhuman.
03:09 And he's Tom Cruise, right?
03:13 But the first time that we were going to meet at an airbase, there was a PA that was like,
03:20 "Tom's about to land.
03:21 Tom's about to land in 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes."
03:23 And so everyone got a little bit like, "Oh my god, Tom's about to land."
03:26 And so we're all waiting in this hallway.
03:29 He lands.
03:30 He's saying hi to someone.
03:32 And then that person-- I forgot who it was.
03:34 They leave, and he's about to come up to us.
03:37 But he takes a sip of water, and he spills a little bit.
03:41 And there's just a small little puddle on the ground.
03:44 And with his foot, he just kind of like washes it away, pretending nothing happened.
03:51 And then he comes up and says hi to us.
03:53 And I remember seeing that.
03:55 And that took down these walls of like, "Oh."
03:59 Or it's just like, "Oh, he's just like us."
04:01 Yeah.
04:02 And then from that building point, he not only is like us, but he proved it.
04:06 And he's one of the most compassionate, empathetic people that is just like,
04:10 he wants you to succeed as much as he wants himself to succeed.
04:14 And he really shows that every single day.
04:16 So that's more so the overall story.
04:18 I think my favorite moments on set with Tom was after set, when we would wrap,
04:23 and we'd all huddle up, and he'll tell us stories about the old times.
04:27 Or he'll just tell us about his experience.
04:30 Oh, no.
04:30 Oh!
04:31 [LAUGHTER]
04:33 Let me delete this.
04:35 Come on!
04:36 About his experiences growing up.
04:41 I thought that was the coolest thing to hear.
04:43 Because you read about it in books, you see it on YouTube.
04:47 But to hear from the person who actually experienced it and met these other icons,
04:53 and what it was like for him to work with great icons of his time in our position was truly special.
05:02 And I think that took down the walls, too.
05:03 Let me be perfectly blunt.
05:05 You were here at the request of Admiral Kazansky, aka Iceman.
05:10 Well, Tom always said, I'm not making the movie unless Val's in it.
05:14 And we called Val and talked to him about the character he was going to play.
05:20 And Val had some other ideas.
05:22 And we collaborated along with Tom and Chris McCrory and came up with the role that he
05:30 plays in the movie, which obviously is very emotional.
05:33 And it's one of the emotional cores of the film.
05:36 It's that ride that Maverick goes through with an old friend and the emotions he feels
05:41 through the making of the movie.
05:44 And the audience feels that.
05:45 And that's a big part of our success.
05:48 He seems to think that you have something left to offer the Navy.
05:50 What that is, I can't imagine.
05:52 Getting it was a bit of a process.
05:54 I had an audition.
05:55 And you get to a point in your career where you have an audition, you just kind of forget
05:59 about it.
05:59 And especially with something this big, you go, OK, I'm not going to get too crazy about it.
06:03 But then I got an email that said Tom Cruise liked your tape.
06:06 And then you start getting a little excited.
06:08 And then I had a few more auditions.
06:10 And then once I got the job, I just got froze.
06:12 It's like, oh, my God, I got it.
06:14 And I was like, oh, my God, what am I going to do?
06:15 How am I going to do this?
06:17 So it was a combination of being frozen and being really excited all at the same time.
06:23 What kind of mission is this?
06:24 So when we auditioned for the movie, shout out to our cast and director, Denise Chayman,
06:31 who's absolutely amazing.
06:33 We had to sign a release saying that we were comfortable flying.
06:37 I don't think anyone equated comfortable flying to the back of an F-18 for like 15 to 16 hours,
06:44 plus 40 hours of flight training.
06:47 I don't think we put those two together.
06:49 And I think we knew we were going to fly for sure.
06:54 But I don't think we thought it was going to be that.
06:56 And then the other piece, I would say that none of us were prepared for or definitely
07:02 knew about was like this swim test.
07:04 Like the swim test is something that none of us knew about at all whatsoever.
07:09 I mean, you're in a pool for about four hours moving the entire time.
07:13 And you have 40 pounds of gear on, helmet, gloves, boots, everything.
07:17 So you start out swimming the length of the pool a couple of times and a couple of strokes.
07:21 Then you do another one where you have to go like the full distance of the pool underwater
07:25 to simulate if there were like a fire on top of the water.
07:29 And then after that, you go into like a couple of different floats that you have to do in order.
07:34 And you never put your feet down.
07:36 You never touch a wall.
07:37 You're moving the entire time.
07:39 I feel like Michael Phelps.
07:41 Like I feel like I could probably beat Michael Phelps after.
07:45 Not now, but then.
07:46 - Damn right.
07:47 - We'll see if we can put some skin in the game.
07:48 - I did not know.
07:50 I knew Tom did his own stunt.
07:52 So I thought that was reserved to Tom Cruise because it's Tom Cruise.
07:56 I did not know that he was going to say, "Hey, now all y'all are going to be flying in jets."
08:00 So when I was told, because they started before me.
08:04 So they had their training.
08:05 But when I was told that, "Hey, you're about to join the crew and start flying with them."
08:08 I was like, "Oh, okay."
08:12 Try to stay with me.
08:14 - For me, it was, yeah, it was much of the same.
08:17 Even though I was in the first group of people that were training, but I just didn't,
08:21 I didn't read the fine print.
08:24 I did sign a paper that said, "If you sign this waiver, you're telling us that you're not afraid
08:29 of flying."
08:29 And I signed it because I'm like, "If I don't sign it, I can't audition.
08:33 And I want to audition and therefore I'll sign it."
08:35 And before I knew it, I was in a Cessna doing a couple hours a week and then in an Exa 300
08:41 and L39.
08:42 And it just kind of like crept up on me.
08:44 And it had been discussed once I got the role, but I had no idea we were going to be in the air.
08:49 Truly, truly.
08:50 I should, like, I'm now going to read every, the Apple agreements that I'm now signing
08:54 up on my phone.
08:55 I'm reading all of it now.
08:56 Push beyond your limits.
08:58 I got to tell you something, every one of them, every one of them just roared through this
09:04 with enthusiasm, enormous amount of effort and pain and fear.
09:10 Everything that goes through you when you, how they gave them underwater training in case they
09:17 got dumped in the ocean and they were blindfolded and turned upside down and had to find, in a cage
09:23 and had to find their way out and then the pounding their bodies took by doing the G-forces.
09:29 They were doing seven, eight times their body weight.
09:31 And when you look at the footage, you see the pain on their faces and the contortion.
09:37 That's not acting.
09:38 That's real.
09:39 They're feeling that.
09:40 So it's an experience I don't think an audience will ever forget.
09:43 And they certainly won't forget it.
09:45 We're going into combat on a level no living pilot's ever seen.
09:48 Not even him.
09:51 There was some talk when we first saw the movie after it had been edited, there was
09:57 some talk of, and Glenn, let's just say it was Glenn, who was begging Tom and Jerry Kaczynski,
10:04 our director, Eddie Hamilton, our editor, begging them to do an extreme cut and then
10:10 also put us in 4D so we would just get tossed around the entire time while you were in the
10:15 extreme cut.
10:16 Luckily, that is not out there right now because I couldn't sit through it.
10:21 But I do want people to sit through it so they can experience what we experienced firsthand.
10:27 Every day was an adventure.
10:32 You never quite know what's going to happen with an audience, if it's going to fall off
10:36 a cliff or not.
10:37 But it keeps, it's like a mountain that keeps growing.
10:40 And yesterday's grosses were better than last week's grosses on the same day.
10:45 So you just never know.
10:46 This movie just keeps going.
10:48 People have seen it multiple times.
10:50 It's enormously entertaining.
10:52 We take inside a world that they'll never be a part of, or most people won't be a part
10:56 of, an aviator and show them how it actually works.
10:59 And they get a ride in an F-18 in that movie and in the theater.
11:03 When you see this on IMAX or a big screen, it is a great ride.
11:08 It's something that I think will last with you.
11:12 And it's just such a thrill ride.
11:14 You're in that F-18 with our characters, and that's an experience you'll never have in
11:20 your life, most probably.
11:22 Literally.
11:23 I'll tell you, the first three people that approached me on the street, Coffee Shop,
11:28 none of them had seen the movie once.
11:30 They had all seen it more than once.
11:33 One guy told me casually that he had seen it before.
11:36 But the other thing was they didn't make a big deal of how many times they saw it.
11:39 They just, that was just part of their, "Hi, Mr. Parnell, sorry to disturb you.
11:43 I saw the movie four times.
11:45 I really liked your..."
11:45 And so that's when I went, "Oh my.
11:48 Wow."
11:51 I was like, "You don't even need that many people to see it if everybody's going to see
11:54 it four times."
11:54 But that's when I, but seriously, that's when I realized it was headed for something big
11:59 because people kept going back to the movie theater.
12:00 Because at first you worry whether you're going to get people to go to the movie theater
12:05 because as a society, all of us, we're just so used to having it on the TV.
12:09 But then, yeah, but then when you hear people are coming several times, it's like,
12:13 that really made me alert.
12:16 I mean, that opening weekend was, I think for all of us, I think that was really a big
12:23 thing for us.
12:24 And I'll say, after that would probably be the following weeks.
12:28 Not only was the opening weekend such a big deal, but every week that followed broke a
12:35 record in terms of how much the movie slowly fell off.
12:41 People were still coming out in crazy, crazy numbers.
12:44 Even last week, for example, I think it was number two or number three in the box office
12:48 domestically in the US, which is crazy because it's in its 12th week.
12:52 I guess wild that that's happening.
12:55 And I think that's when we really started to notice it.
12:58 And then I will say on the other side, when we first started the press tour, the response
13:04 that we were getting from people, I think it threw all of us because it was so, people
13:09 just loved the movie so much.
13:10 They were so effusive about how much they loved it and wanted to know so much about
13:15 it and our experience doing it.
13:16 And I think that's really where we started to go like, oh, OK, this is special.
13:22 This is a big deal.
13:24 I don't think any of us thought like 13 weeks later, we would still be back in IMAX and
13:32 crushing in the box office.
13:34 And now, obviously, getting ready to come out digitally next week.
13:37 I don't think any of us necessarily foresaw all of that, but I definitely think we were
13:42 like, oh, there's no who knows when this thing there's no limit to this, to what this
13:46 thing could do, because so many people around the world love it.
13:48 Like it's a film that anyone can go see and love.
13:52 After the movie, we knew it before the movie.
13:55 What you talking about?
13:56 No, no, no, no.
13:59 It was it was when we first started doing the interviews and, you know, they had the
14:04 early, early screenings for press and every time somebody would come in, they would just
14:13 not stop talking about the film.
14:14 And it was like, hey, OK, y'all want to come and sit down and do the interview?
14:18 Because y'all pitching this amazingly like it was great.
14:21 And after we after, you know, it'll be done.
14:24 We're just like, oh, wow, this is what people love.
14:28 It people really, really love this film.
14:30 Yeah, that was when I realized, like, yo, we have a hit on our hands.
14:35 Yeah, I think around that same time, yeah, we're in the same room, like basically being
14:39 like, this is weird.
14:40 This is weird.
14:40 This has been a full day of everyone like they would start talking before the interview
14:45 started recording.
14:45 Yeah.
14:46 And I was just like pure enthusiasm.
14:49 They were still from the high of like leaving the movie theater, even though it was the
14:52 day before, because I think when we saw it or even even though we experienced it that
14:57 like leaving that theater, I was I was on for a while.
15:01 And then I was like, oh, that's the same like they rode the same roller coaster I did.
15:05 And they have the exact same effect.
15:07 And and yet that first day was more so like we just it was just like, oh, this is you
15:12 feel it in the air.
15:13 And we're all like, this is definitely really special.
15:15 But yeah, I'd say I honestly thought I was like, OK, this is what, you know, PR for a
15:22 movie is like the studio pays interviewers to come in and talk highly of the film.
15:28 Because there was no way every every interviewer would come in and speak so highly of the film.
15:32 I was like, there's no way they must be, you know, gassing us up.
15:36 But I mean, 99 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
15:40 I mean, it's not like I watch it or anything, but.
15:43 And then an audience score of 99 with over 50,000 plus reviews.
15:51 And so those 50,000 plus and then some are going to be able to watch it from the comfort
15:55 of their own homes in their Sony Bravia home theater setups, whatever whatever setups they
16:00 got, they'll be able to watch it limitlessly.
16:03 And I'm really excited about that.
16:04 August 23rd.
16:06 120 Hall has what it takes to follow me.
16:08 Well, if we make wait 36 years, I won't be around.
16:12 So if we make another one, I hope we do it quickly.
16:16 The end is inevitable, Maverick.
16:19 Your kind is headed for extinction.
16:21 Maybe so, sir.
16:24 But not today.
16:26 But not today.
16:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]