The first Top Gun was a massive hit that caused people to hope for a sequel for decades. If the studio had any clue that a sequel would be as successful as it was, somebody probably would have made one a lot sooner than they made Top Gun: Maverick. Of course, if that had happened, Jon Hamm probably wouldn’t have been in it, and that would have robbed us of great moments.
In a recent appearance on Happy Sad Confused, Hamm discussed the first time he met Tom Cruise. It’s a moment that would certainly be life-changing for a lot of regular people, but even Jon Hamm admitted to being a bit starstruck by Cruise, who was apparently quite happy to see the Mad Men star. Hamm said…
I remember walking onto the set of Top Gun: Maverick, and there’s like a four-story American flag to my left and a Tom Cruise walking toward me in full Maverick gear with a giant smile. And he’s like, ‘I’m so glad you’re here!’ It took everything in me to not look behind me like ‘Is he talking to me?’
Cruise was talking to Jon Hamm, and the pair apparently had a conversation with Cruise in full Maverick costume next to a massive American flag. I would think the person having the most bizarre experience here would have been Hamm, who has said he was a massive fan of the first movie and was desperate to be in Maverick, but he thought that making the Top Gun sequel must have been equally crazy for Cruise. The original Top Gun star seemingly hadn’t really thought about it much. Hamm continued…
We had a conversation, I said, ‘This must be bizarre for you. You were here, in this exact space 35 years ago playing the same character.’ And he’s like ‘Yeah, it’s pretty wild. Ready to shoot?’ I said ‘Ok! Let’s go!’
The way Tom Cruise goes from “pretty wild” to "ready to shoot without taking a breath" certainly shows where the actor’s head was at in that moment. He seemingly wasn’t really thinking much about the fact that he was reprising a role he first played more than three decades before. He was all about the movie he was making in that moment.
It will be interesting to see what sort of conversations these two have if they reunite for Top Gun 3. When asked about the sequel, Hamm said that he thought it was happening. We know that the movie is in development, although its status is unknown at this point. Nobody wants to wait decades to make a third Top Gun movie, and while Tom Cruise still looks great, he certainly doesn’t have 30 more years in him to wait.
