With Top Gun: Maverick coming out later this year, we can’t seem to get Tom Cruise out of the public consciousness. Turns out neither can his former co-star, Val Kilmer, who had a lot of choice words to say about the actor in his new memoir, I’m Your Huckleberry. In a snippet of the book (made available through The Daily Beast), the ‘80s heartthrob opened up about his relationship with Tom Cruise and their rivalry on the Top Gun set.
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Val Kilmer explained that he and Tom Cruise didn’t really get along because of a faction-type rivalry on set. And here we thought that Val Kilmer and Tom Cruise’s tension was limited to the silver screen!
Kilmer believed that he led the “party boys” and Cruise displayed a “laser-like” focus when on set. Apparently, Tom Cruise wasn’t on board with the party boys as he was on a mission to make the “greatest action hero in the history of film.”
Kilmer said that as soon as the Director yelled cut, the entire room split into “two camps – (his) and Toms.” In I’m Your Huckleberry, Kilmer said, “Tom refrained from our revelry, with good reason… From day one, he was laser-focused on a singular goal: to become the greatest action hero in the history of film. He was up nights learning lines; he spent every waking hour perfecting his stunts. His dedication was admirable. Of course, even more, admirable is the fact that he achieved his goal.”
Kilmer’s not wrong, Top Gun did eventually become one of the most iconic films of all time, hence why we’re getting a sequel!
But this was the only detail we got about Tom Cruise from Kilmer’s memoir. Apparently the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang star used to play pranks on Cruise, saying: “My favourite moment between us was a small prank in which I gave him an extremely expensive bottle of champagne but placed it in the middle of a giant field and made him follow scavenger-hunt-style clues to find it… “I hid behind a bleacher and watched him lug the giant crate to his motorcycle. He never did thank me for the Iceman-style bit. I thought it would break the ice, but I guess the ice was just right.”
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Also, Kilmer actually spoke about begging to be in the Top Gun sequel. He said, “(Tom Cruise) was calling it Top Gun: Maverick. Well, Tom was Maverick, but Maverick’s nemesis was Iceman. The two went together like salt and pepper… It didn’t matter that the producers didn’t contact me. As the Temptations sang in the heyday of Motown soul, ‘ain’t too proud to beg.’”
Kilmer continued, “Forget the fact that thirty years had passed since I’d seen the ghost of Iceman’s dad. I remembered it like it was yesterday… The producers went for it. Cruise went for it. Cruise couldn’t have been cooler. And the next thing I knew I was back, as the Beatles said, where I ‘once belonged.’”
Top Gun: Maverick is scheduled to be released at the end of this year.
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