Tom Cruise Comes Back as His TROPIC THUNDER Character Les Grossman on CONAN
Tom Cruise appeared on Conan last night during Conan O'Brien’s special San Diego Comic-Con week of episodes to talk about his upcoming film Top Gun: Maverick, which looks so freakin’ awesome! Anyway, while he was on the show, Cruise reprised his hilarious Tropic Thunder role of Les Grossman.
This is easily one of the best and most entertaining characters that Cruise has played in a movie, and it was hilarious to get a taste of that Les Grossman dancing fury again.
During the interview, Conan was talking to Cruise about the character and the actor really dove in and offered some fun and interesting insight on the character. He also talked about why he took on the character saying:
"I take classes all the time to learn things. I want to prove a skill, whether it's singing, music, whatever subject I'm studying. So I took dance classes and I took hip-hop classes. And what I'll find is I'll find a character to put that with. So Ben [Stiller] is a good buddy of mine, and he called me up, and I said 'Look, I'd love to play this character, but I want to fat hands, and I want to dance."
Conan obviously thought this seemed like an "absurd" request, but the actor was clear in his vision for who Les Grossman had to be and he explained:
"Look I don't know what to say; sometimes with a character you just get an instinct for what you want to do. And I said 'No, I really want fat hands, and I'm going to dance.’"
Ben Stiller was confused by the requests and kept trying to change Cruise's mind, but the actor persisted until he got what he asked for. I guess you just can’t say no to Tom Cruise, and things just got weird from there:
"So he created the makeup and we did the makeup test, and I just started showing him... I just started moving. And there was no music, he was just looking at me like, 'What's happening?', and I was kind of moving and crushing Pepsi cans and Coke cans, and then he calls me the next day, and he cut to that piece of music... and he just says 'I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it, It's hilarious.'"
The piece of music Cruise is referencing is Ludacris' 2004 song "Get Back," which is kind of funny because the music video featured the rapper getting crazy while also wearing some giant prosthetic hands.