Jon Hamm Teases Clash with Maverick in TOP GUN: MAVERICK and Talks About Working with Tom Cruise
While we continue to wait for Top Gun: Maverick to be released in the summer of next year, Jon Hamm teased some new details and talked about what it’s like to work with Tom Cruise.
Hamm takes on the role of Vice Admiral Cyclone in the story, and it’s explained that he is going to rub Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell the wrong way and cause some tension. During a recent interview with Men's Journal, Hamm said:
"Yeah, it’s sort of tangentially related [to Viper]. It’s not so much of a father figure, the way Viper was to Tom. He’s air boss of the fighter wing. He has a lot of authority and responsibility. When that rubs up against Maverick, there’s friction, as you would guess. I provide the friction."
Now, while these characters will be at odds on the story, Hamm had nothing but good things to say about Cruise, and the way he led the film:
"Well, I’ll say this about Tom, he is 100 percent movie star and 100 percent a leader. On Mad Men, I learned that if the person at the top of the food chain behaves in a certain way, then that’s how the rest of the folks are going to behave. Tom’s always ready. He’s already prepared. He’s always on time. He’s got 900 things going on that you don’t even know about. But that never comes into the daily work. If there was any pressure to perform and be great, or uphold the legacy of this film, it didn’t show. You could tell that he was having the time of his life, and that enthusiasm completely washed over the rest of the cast. My first day on set, I said to Tom, “This has to be just surreal for you. Like you’re literally in the same hangar, 30 years later. In nearly the same costume. What’s that like?” And he goes, “Man, it’s unreal. How cool is this?”"
Top Gun: Maverick was directed by Joseph Kosinski and Cruise is joined by Miles Teller as Goose's son, Val Kilmer, Glen Powell, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Ed Harris, and Lewis Pullman. Here’s the synopsis that was previously released:
After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose.”
Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.
We can expect to see some wicked awesome aerial sequences in the film. Cruise previously teased, “There’s never been an aerial sequence shot this way. I don’t know if there ever will be again, to be honest.”
Top Gun: Maverick is currently set to be released on July 2, 2021. I’m so ready to watch this!