Hannah Waddingham has a “real problem” with Tom Cruise haters.
“He is without doubt one of the loveliest and encouraging, positive and inspiring human beings I have ever met,” Waddingham, 49, said of Cruise, 62, when appearing on the Monday, December 25, episode of ITV’s James Martin’s Saturday Morning. “Isn’t he gorgeous? I have no time for anyone saying anything about him.”
Waddingham appeared alongside Cruise in the eighth Mission Impossible movie — titled Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two — which is set to be released in 2025. While her role hasn’t been revealed just yet, Waddingham said she spent “five days intensely” on the USS George H.W. Bush fighter carrier acting with Cruise, who plays Ethan Hunt in the film franchise.
Initially, Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part Two was set to be released in June 2024. It was revealed in October that the film’s release date had been pushed until May 2025 after production was halted due to the SAG-AFTRA strike earlier this year. Waddingham said during her Sunday Morning interview that she still has “another kind of main scene” to shoot with Cruise after production on the movie resumes.
Waddingham’s Mission Impossible casting was announced in March when the film’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, welcomed her to the franchise via a since-deleted Instagram post.
Filming on an aircraft carrier was nothing new for Waddingham. The Ted Lasso alum recalled telling Cruise and McQuarrie that she had experience with “this world” because she had “grown up on boats.” (Waddingham’s father worked for the river police.)
“I know the thing of mucking in, sleeping in a cot bed, climbing up ladders through port holes. … That’s where I’ve grown,” she shared during an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” earlier this month. “I’ve got this down. Don’t you worry. I’m used to trying to do my teeth and brushing my hair in a tiny little cabin.”
Waddingham further discussed her working relationship with Cruise during the SiriusXM interview, joking that she asked him to “stop doing his Tom Cruise twinkly thing.”
“I literally said to him, because we’re head to head, I was like, ‘Stop doing that twinkly thing,’” she said, joking that he “can’t” help “that thing” he does.
Waddingham isn’t the only Mission Impossible star to gush over Cruise.
Hayley Atwell, who starred in this year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, said the veteran actor and director McQuarrie are “sort of two uncles” to her. Atwell’s comments came amid rumors that she and Cruise were romantically involved.
“Why are things being assumed or projected onto me about my relationship with my work colleague and boss?” she told The Independent in July, responding to the “upsetting” rumors. “It’s involving people in my actual life, my personal life, who have to be on the receiving end of that. It becomes invasive.”
Previously, Cruise’s behavior on the Mission Impossible set has come under public scrutiny, especially after he delivered an expletive-filled on-set rant in 2020. In leaked audio from the Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One set, Cruise could be heard telling crew members they’d be “f—king gone” if they broke COVID-19 protocol.
Cruise said that the stands by the rant when addressing public outcry the following year.
“I said what I said,” he said to Empire magazine in May 2021, explaining that he was addressing “select people” on set. “There was a lot at stake at that point.”
