The Tom Cruise role that required approval from Ludacris: “I was more than happy”
Having been an A-list superstar for almost 40 years, there aren’t many people in Hollywood who have the ability to overrule Tom Cruise. As bizarre as it sounds, that power once lay exclusively in the hands of rapper-turned-actor Ludacris.
The pair have hardly been known to travel in the same circles, although they are familiar with a blockbuster action movie or two after their respective decades-long contributions to the Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious franchises.
Realistically, would Ludacris have considered stopping Cruise in his tracks and denying him the signature scene from a performance he’s shown in the years since to be oddly close to his heart? Probably not, but the fact of the matter remained that legal and contractual obligations necessitated his approval anyway.
Broad comedy is something Cruise doesn’t do all that often, which is why his turn in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder caught so many people off-guard. Buried under makeup and prosthetics, sporting a bald cap and inexplicably enlarged forearms, the actor’s studio mogul Les Grossman was a riotous addition to a self-referential romp that was already overflowing with big names.
Clearly enjoying the freedom to cut loose and ham it up for the cheap seats, Cruise became fascinated by Grossman. He appeared in character at the 2010 edition of the MTV Movie Awards, attached himself to a solo spinoff for the character, and brought him back again for a 2019 appearance on Conan O’Brien’s talk show.
During the Tropic Thunder credits, Cruise busts some moves as Grossman to the sound of Ludacris’ 2005 track ‘Get Back’ from his fifth album, The Red Light District. In order for that to happen, the film – and, by extension, the Top Gun figurehead’s dancing – had to gain the personal seal of approval from the artist who recorded it.
“Not only did he seek approval, respectfully, he invited us to watch the movie before it came out, and it was literally just me, him and my management, and we watched the whole movie,” Ludacris confirmed to Hot Ones of his special Stiller-approved and Cruise-endorsed screening. “Just to see at the end for him to ask me, ‘Is it OK to clear this?’. And I was like, ‘Absolutely.'”
It must have been a surreal experience for the musician to sit in a room surrounded by his entire team at Stiller’s request to sit through the entirety of Tropic Thunder for the express purpose of giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to one of the most famous stars on the planet twerking to a track he’d recorded several years previously.
Realistically, there was only going to be one outcome, but Ludacris nonetheless admitted that “I was more than happy” to give his blessing to Tropic Thunder utilising ‘Get Back’ as the final flourish on Cruise’s scenery-devouring turn as the foul-mouthed and formidable Grossman.
