Top Gun: Maverick Star Reveals Hilarious Advice Tom Cruise Gave Him

By Russ Burlingame

Top Gun: Maverick's Glen Powell may have come off like a little bit of a jerk in the film -- but that was all part of the plan. In some ways, his character was a lot like Maverick in the original Top Gun, whose mistakes all came out of the fact that he never stopped to ask if something was a good idea, and so it's not surprising that when Powell was trying to dial in the performance, he reached out to Cruise. His concern? He didn't want to look like a cartoonish stereotype of a villain onscreen, and become totally unrelatable.

Cruise's response? Basically, it came down to, do that. Do exactly the thing you don't want to do, because it's good for the character.

"Sometimes you can fall into the trap of wanting to be liked on camera," Powell told Variety. "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.'"

According to Top Gun: Maverick's official synopsis, After more than 30 years of service as one of the Navy's top aviators, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. Training a detachment of graduates for a special assignment, Maverick must confront the ghosts of his past and his deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who choose to fly it.

Joseph Kosinski directed Top Gun: Maverick from a screenplay written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie. The film stars Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, and Val Kilmer.

You can see Top Gun: Maverick on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital now.

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