Tom Cruise only decided to accept the role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun after an extreme experience aboard a military aircraft that proved decisive for his participation in the film.
According to accounts by producer Jerry Bruckheimer and screenwriter Jack Epps Jr., Cruise was taken on a flight with the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s flight demonstration team, in an attempt to convince him to join the project.
During the flight, the pilots performed intense maneuvers that subjected the actor to strong G-forces. “They look at him and they don’t know who Tom Cruise is. They do what they like to do: they took him [and] shook him up,” Epps told The Guardian.
The experience was so extreme that Cruise ended up feeling sick and vomiting during the flight. Even so, his reaction was the opposite of what might have been expected: after getting out of the aircraft, he said he had loved the experience and immediately showed enthusiasm about taking part in the film. “[He] came out and said: ‘I love it.’ From that moment on, he was in.”
The episode ultimately became one of the decisive moments in the production of Top Gun, helping to cement the actor’s involvement in the project that would become one of the biggest successes of his career.
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