Mission: Impossible Star Says It Is Terrifying Watching Tom Cruise Do Stunts

There are countless recurring jokes about the ever escalating stakes with Tom Cruise’s stunts in the Mission: Impossible film franchise. 2018’s Mission Impossible – Fallout pushed things to their limit having Cruise take part in a HALO jump, pilot a helicopter in-between narrow rock structures, and even hang from a moving helicopter, he did it all! He even broke his ankle filming one scene which delayed production and eventually the sequel’s release date! Speaking in a new interview, his Mission: Impossible co-star Simon Pegg opened up about having to watch Cruise prepare for and then take part in these stunts, confirming as we expect that it’s terrifying.

“When you watch the movie and you see him do those stunts, and it’s nail-biting and there’s a real sense of genuine kind of peril becuase you know that it’s him,” Pegg told Conan O’Brien. “But you know he survived because he was on Good Morning America that morning and he did some press. When we watch him do it, we have no idea if he’s going to survive. So he rides a bike off a cliff, and everybody’s just waiting for, ‘Good canopy, good canopy, anybody?’ It’s terrifying.”

Pegg went on to talk about Cruise’s non-stop preparedness for the stunts, teasing the work that has already gone into the upcoming seventh movie.

“He loves it,” Pegg adds. “He puts in a lot of works, he trains rigorously. He literally will become the best at, you tell him something and he’ll just become the best at it. He’ll take as many hours as it takes, but he won’t do the stunt until he knows (it’s safe). The prep that went into the big stunts for this film are insane.”

Filming is ongoing for Mission: Impossible 7 with Cruise and Pegg reuniting with co-stars Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, with long time franchise veteran Ving Rhames, and even Henry Czerny from the 1996 original film. Newcomers to the series that are set to appear will include Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, and Esai Morales as the main villain.

The new film will be director Christopher McQuarrie’s third time stepping behind the camera for a feature in the franchise, after last helming Rogue Nation and Fallout, two of the most well-received entries to the franchise. Mission: Impossible 7‘s release date was previously delayed by four months after its stopage in production and is now slated to hit theaters on November 19, 2021. Mission: Impossible 8 will open on November 4, 2022. It’s unclear if the film will be delayed any further due to the production hold ups.