When Shea Whigham signed on for “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” he was sure he’d learn that some of Tom Cruise’s death-defying stunt work involved “smoke and mirrors.”
How wrong he was.
“He does everything himself. He really does,” Whigham told me at the “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” premiere.
Whigham had to get in on the action too – although nothing was as drastic as Cruise’s already iconic motorcycle drive off a mountain in Iceland. “I do all my own driving in it,” he said. “There’s no stunt driving. We went hard in Rome. We also chased Tom on foot a lot in Venice. I pulled muscles left and right. I’m still recovering.”
Cruise recently told Entertainment Tonight that he insisted on shooting the motorcycle-mountain stunt on day one of filming. “Well, we know either we will continue with the film or we’re not. Let’s know day one! Let us know day one what is going to happen: Do we all continue or is it a major rewrite?”
He continued, “I was training and I was ready. You have to be razor sharp when you’re doing something like that. It was very important as we were prepping the film that it was actually the first thing. I don’t want to drop that and go shoot other things and have my mind somewhere else. Everyone was prepped. Let’s just get it done.”
Co-star Vanessa Kirby recalled watching Cruise complete the stunt when we talked at the Met Gala in May. “He did it many times in one day,” recalls Kirby. “He did it consecutively … and repeatedly so he could capture all the different angles and sides of it.”
Cruise also showed no signs of being nervous. “He was just so calm,” Kirby says. “He had no fear. He just found it exhilarating. That kind of belief in cinema and what one could achieve and his passion for it is so inspiring. He kind of believeshe can do the impossibleand then he does…I love being a part of the franchise. I’m really excited to come back.”
