Mission: Impossible: Greg Tarzan Davis Reveals How He Landed a Role in the Franchise

Greg Tarzan Davis, one of the new stars of the Mission: Impossible movies, reveals how he joined the franchise. One of his biggest roles to date was as Javy “Coyote” Machado in the smash hit Top Gun: Maverick, which shattered box offices during the final days of the pandemic. Davis reteams with Tom Cruise for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and it’s another big opportunity in his young career. The actor recently spoke about securing a part in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and joining the billion-dollar franchise.

ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis spoke to Greg Tarzan Davis at the red-carpet premiere of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One out in Rome. One of Davis’ first questions to Davis was about developing a relationship with Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie during the filming of Top Gun: Maverick, and how that helped in being added to the Mission: Impossible franchise. 

“I manifested this… I put this on my vision board,” Davis said. “I put it on my vision board that I wanted to work with them. I got a call from McQuarrie saying, ‘Hey, Tom and I loved what you did in Top Gun, and we want to bring you along on this journey with Mission: Impossible. We thought about this character for you, we wrote it for you, and we want you to join this franchise. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but would you be interested?’ And I said, ‘Yes, of course.’”

Mission: Impossible Director Reveals How Stunts Are Planned

There’s a new Mission: Impossible movie hitting theaters in just a few weeks, which means a new set of stunts that audiences will be buzzing about for days after. The franchise is built around incredible feats — and around the fact that series lead Tom Cruise does a lot of his own stunts, so you can usually get a pretty good look at him doing something insane. This time around, there was a motorcycle stunt shot on the first day of filming that required weeks of training and setup, and was maybe one of the biggest, riskiest things of Cruise’s career. Then, later in production, there was a train sequence that filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie was determined to get right.

But Mission: Impossible isn’t just another movie with big action set pieces. Going all the way back to the first movie, what scene do you remember? It’s the iconic scene of Cruise suspended inches off the floor, being moved through a heist in a harness. ComicBook.com asked McQuarrie, who has written and directed more than one of these films, how he tries to crack “the stunt” of any given movie.

“There’s not a chicken, there’s not an egg,” McQuarrie told ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis. “Sometimes we start with…like, Fallout started with the emotional story of Ethan and Julia, and the stunts were kind of put around in the periphery. The beginning of this one, I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He said, ‘I want to ride a motorcycle off a cliff. What do you want to do?’ And I said, ‘I want to wreck a train. Let’s just wreck a train.’ Of course, both of us at one point or another would remind the other, ‘You know, this was your idea. You wanted to do this.’ Tom was very fortunate in one respect because he got his stunt out of the way Day One. I’m still shooting that train. That just took forever, and it was very, very challenging.”

Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which premieres in theaters on July 12th. It’s the beginning of the end for the action-packed franchise, as Cruise reteams with longtime collaborator and filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie for more death-defying and breathtaking stunts. Hunt and allies Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) attempt to track down a new weapon with the power to tear the world apart. Actors Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Esai Morales join the cast for the latest installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which is set to wrap up with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two.