Tom Cruise had sage advice for playing a cocky antagonist onscreen: Be the biggest asshole you can be.
Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” co-star Glen Powell revealed that the iconic actor helped him dispel pressure to be “liked” in the film as arrogant Navy pilot Hangman.
“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,” Powell said during Variety’s Actors on Actors series opposite Kate Hudson. “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.'”
Powell joked, “I keep getting cast as a douchebag. Even the thing I did with Ollie [Hudson] in ‘Scream Queens,’ where I’m a super douche.”
Powell previously told GQ that he thought his “Maverick” character Hangman was “dick garnish.”
“He was there to add conflict to Rooster’s [Miles Teller] character, which is a good thing, but he wasn’t three-dimensional and he had no pay off. I didn’t know why he existed,” Powell said of the role before working with Cruise. “It was a leap of faith. In hindsight, I’m like, ‘God, I can’t imagine if I missed out on this one,’ but it wasn’t so obvious.”
Cruise told Powell at the time, “‘It’s not that I need people to root for you, but I need them to love watching you. In some places in the world, this piece of body language will turn them off emotionally to your character.'”
Powell expanded on working with Cruise in an interview with IndieWire’s Kate Erbland, saying that he did have input on his call sign Hangman and collaborated closely with Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski to have “agency” over the character.
“I remember Tom giving me some advice, or him kind of thinking out loud to a degree,” Powell explained. “He said, ‘Look, the first movie was a coming-of-age story. This is a man facing his age story. We want you to represent the original “Top Gun.” We need that sort of swagger. We need that fun, that unapologetic ego in this movie. We want this thing to play on the attributes that we think make you special. We want this to be whatever you want it to be.'”
Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” co-star Glen Powell revealed that the iconic actor helped him dispel pressure to be “liked” in the film as arrogant Navy pilot Hangman.
“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,” Powell said during Variety’s Actors on Actors series opposite Kate Hudson. “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.'”
Powell joked, “I keep getting cast as a douchebag. Even the thing I did with Ollie [Hudson] in ‘Scream Queens,’ where I’m a super douche.”
Powell previously told GQ that he thought his “Maverick” character Hangman was “dick garnish.”
“He was there to add conflict to Rooster’s [Miles Teller] character, which is a good thing, but he wasn’t three-dimensional and he had no pay off. I didn’t know why he existed,” Powell said of the role before working with Cruise. “It was a leap of faith. In hindsight, I’m like, ‘God, I can’t imagine if I missed out on this one,’ but it wasn’t so obvious.”
Cruise told Powell at the time, “‘It’s not that I need people to root for you, but I need them to love watching you. In some places in the world, this piece of body language will turn them off emotionally to your character.'”
Powell expanded on working with Cruise in an interview with IndieWire’s Kate Erbland, saying that he did have input on his call sign Hangman and collaborated closely with Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski to have “agency” over the character.
“I remember Tom giving me some advice, or him kind of thinking out loud to a degree,” Powell explained. “He said, ‘Look, the first movie was a coming-of-age story. This is a man facing his age story. We want you to represent the original “Top Gun.” We need that sort of swagger. We need that fun, that unapologetic ego in this movie. We want this thing to play on the attributes that we think make you special. We want this to be whatever you want it to be.'”