Hannah Waddingham appeared on the Xmas episode of ITV’s “James Martin’s Saturday Morning”–said she’s ready to defend Tom Cruise against his critics.
The Ted Lasso Emmy winner was joined Cruise and the “Mission: Impossible” gang in the eighth installment, which was originally designed as the second part to Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part One.”
Waddingham’s “Mission: Impossible 8” character has not been revealed, but she said she spent 5 intense days with Cruise filming the action tentpole on the USS George H.W. Bush fighter carrier. She still has “another kind of main scene” to shoot with Cruise once production restarts.
Waddingham told SiriusXM earlier that she grew up on boats because her father was in the river police her entire life, so she was more than eager to film her “Mission: Impossible 8” scenes while on an actual fighter carrier. “I know this world so much,” she remembered saying to Cruise and the film’s director, Christopher McQuarrie. “I’ve got this down. Don’t worry. I’m used to brushing my teeth in a tiny little cabin.”
Dead Reckoning Part One opened in theaters just before the global phenomenon of Barbenheimer.
Despite positive reviews and goodwill from Cruise’s last blockbuster sensation, “Top Gun: Maverick,” the tentpole fell short of box office expectations with $567 million globally. “Part One” hardly played on Imax screens because Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” dominated the premium format through the end of the summer. That won’t be the case with the eighth “Mission” movie, which will get a three-week exclusive Imax run.
Before Waddingham stars in “Mission: Impossible 8,” she’ll appear opposite Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in the action comedy The Fall Guy, opening May 3 from Universal.
