Meeting Tom Cruise is a pinch me moment for many young actors, but meeting Tom Cruise while he’s in character as the foul-mouthed Hollywood agent Len Grossman from “Tropic Thunder” is a whole different beast. Michael Cera found out the funny way when he showed up to film a pre-taped segment for the 2010 MTV Movie Awards alongside Cruise as Grossman.
“Tom Cruise did one where he was playing his character from ‘Tropic Thunder,’ the movie mogul guy,” Cera said on the “Louis Theroux Podcast” (via Entertainment Weekly). “So they were shooting all day these little clips of him and that character interacting with various people coming in and out, and I came in and I did a little moment with him on that.”
“Tom runs the set,” he added. “I was really there for like five minutes, but what I observed was, he was like the first AD on the set…. I mean, he was such a leader. The first moment I had with him, I arrived, they were shooting, and I was talking to the writer. We were just kind of mumbling while they were shooting, but they could hear us. It was just like 40 feet away. And Tom Cruise looks at me, I’ve never met him, and they’re in the middle of a take and he looks, and he goes, ‘Is that Michael Cera talking during a fucking take?’ He was joking, but it was also like, ‘Do shut up,’ you know? But so surreal.”
Cera came face to face with Cruise later that day, explaining: “Then I met him and he is like, ‘Talking during a fucking take.’ I knew he was playing around, so I was like, ‘Hey man, it wasn’t me, it was the writer.’ He was like, ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding.’ And I was like, ‘I’m kidding, too.’”
Cruise earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as Les Grossman in “Tropic Thunder,” Ben Stiller’s Hollywood satire about the making of a Vietnam War movie gone wrong. The actor’s longtime “Mission: Impossible” collaborator Christopher McQuarrie recently said on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that he and Cruise have been discussing a potential Les Grossman movie.
“The conversations we’ve had about Les Grossman are so fucking funny,” McQuarrie said. “[Cruise and I are] talking about it, we’re having very serious conversations about it, and how best to do it. It ultimately comes down to what that character is.”
Listen to Cera’s full interview on the “Louis Theroux Podcast” here.
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From Variety US