Tom Cruise Told Glen Powell To "Lean into the Douchebaggery of it All" For TOP GUN: MAVERICK

Glen Powell definitely came off as kind of a jerk in Top Gun: Maverick, but that was the whole point of his character! You had to have a character with that cocky attitude. I thought there were aspects of the character that were actually a lot of Maverick in the original film!

When Powell was trying to figure out his performance in the movie, he didn’t want to look like a stereotypical villain that was completely unrelatable. So he reached out to Tom Cruise for some advice, and that advice included doing exactly what he didn’t want to do because it’s who the character needed to be for it to work.

Cruise’s advice was actually pretty amusing. Powell told Variety: "Sometimes you can fall into the trap of wanting to be liked on camera. And in a movie like this, where you know there's going to be a lot of eyes on it, you don't want to be Draco Malfoy. But Tom gave me this advice: 'For the ending to work, you have to completely lean into that. Everybody else in the movie is questioning their own ability. You're the only guy that's not questioning it. So if there's any sort of apology in anything you say, the movie doesn't work. Lean into the douchebaggery of it all.'"

I love that advice to “lean into the douchebaggery of it all.” In the end, it worked exactly the way it was supposed to! I actually really enjoyed Glen Powell’s character in the movie!

Anyway, Top Gun: Maverick was awesome!