The role Glen Powell’s mother would never let him play: “Worst gig in town”
In recent years, one man seems to have been anointed by Hollywood as the movie star who will carry the business forward for the next several decades. After toiling away in small parts in TV and film for the better part of two decades, Glen Powell suddenly blasted into the stratosphere with his eye-catching supporting turn as fighter pilot ‘Hangman’ in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. Leading man roles in the rom-com Anyone But You and the blockbuster sequel Twisters followed, and all of a sudden, Powell was the great hope for the future. Amusingly, though, he revealed that his mother won’t let him inherit the most infamous job of the current last remaining movie star.
When Powell auditioned for Maverick, he was to play the part of Rooster that would eventually be filled by Miles Teller. Powell lost out on that role, but star Tom Cruise liked his audition so much that he offered him the smaller part of Hangman. Amazingly, despite being best known then for playing the amusingly named Chad Radwell in the black comedy slasher series Scream Queens, Powell told the biggest movie star in Hollywood that he had some notes on the character.
In 2024, Powell told Variety, “I said my piece to Tom about what I do and what I do well, and he listened. Tom’s a listener. He listens to the crew members, he listens to his collaborators, and he hears people.”
Powell must have impressed Cruise with his honesty and dedication to the film because they became close friends as production rolled on. So much so, in fact, that he claimed Cruise once personally flew him to London in a helicopter and played a rather terrifying prank. Powell chuckled, “Tom goes ‘Oh no, oh no,’ and he starts dropping the helicopter over London. I was like, ‘Am I about to be the unnamed guy that dies with Tom in a smoking hole in the middle of London?'”
Indeed, Cruise was so convinced about Powell’s movie star potential that he sent him to a cinema in Los Angeles to watch a six-hour crash course in moviemaking. In essence, it was a film school video that Cruise had put together himself – and Powell was the only person in the cinema watching it. He claimed that Cruise had no intention of releasing the video publicly, but for those he deemed worthy, it was an insight into everything he’d learned about the movie business in 40+ years as an A-lister.
In a concise timeframe, Powell and Cruise seemingly took on a mentee/mentor dynamic, so it was unsurprising when a rumour began swirling in November 2024. With the eighth and supposedly final instalment of Cruise’s historic Mission: Impossible series around the corner, reports began circulating that Cruise was eyeing up Powell as a potential replacement star to continue the franchise.
On November 12th, ESPN commentator and Powell’s pal Pat McAfee decided to FaceTime his buddy to see if there was any truth to the rumours. He told the star, “We just want to call and say congratulations, brother,” but a smiling Powell was quick to burst the bubble. The Hit Man star chuckled, “My mom would never let me do that.”
Powell quickly added that Mission: Impossible was the “worst gig in town, everybody knows that” and joked, “That’s a death trap.” It was obvious that he was affectionately poking fun at the well-publicised history of Cruise performing countless death-defying stunts over the years while making the franchise. However, it was also a clever way to deflect from any potential truth there is to the reports.
Ultimately, would it be surprising if Cruise passed the torch of his enormously successful long-running franchise to Powell, the guy he’s seemingly been grooming for superstardom? Probably not. In fact, it sounds pretty likely from where we’re standing – no matter what Powell’s mum thinks.
