Everything Kelly McGillis Has Said About ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ Jennifer Connelly as Tom Cruise’s New Love Interest

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Everything Kelly McGillis Has Said About 'Top Gun: Maverick,' Jennifer Connelly as Tom Cruise's New Love Interest

Alexa, play “Take My Breath Away.” While the nostalgia is overwhelming for Top Gun fans in the sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, not everything is the same for the title character 30 years after the original film. In the second film, Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell returns to train younger Top Gun graduates — including his late best friend Goose’s son, Rooster (Miles Teller) — for a special mission. Played by Anthony Edwards in 1986, Goose and wife Carole Bradshaw (Meg Ryan) appear in flashbacks in the 2022 movie. Ryan wasn’t the only actor who wasn’t asked back for Top Gun: Maverick, however. Kelly McGillis — Maverick’s love interest, Charlie, in Top Gun — isn’t part of the second movie. Instead, the pilot reconnects with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), who is referenced — but not seen — as the admiral's daughter with a past with Maverick in the original film. “[Goose] told me all about the time you went ballistic with Penny Benjamin,” Carole said to Goose, Maverick and Charlie in the 1986 movie. While McGillis implied to Entertainment Tonight in 2019 (when production on Top Gun: Maverick was underway) that aging is why she wasn’t asked back, director Joseph Kosinski told Insider that McGillis and Ryan aren’t part of the sequel because of how their characters would impact the new stories. [jwplayer HndQXc6Y-zhNYySv2] “Those weren’t stories that we were throwing around. I didn’t want every story line to always be looking backwards. It was important to introduce some new characters,” Kosinski said in May 2022. “Penny Benjamin, a character we have heard mentioned but never seen before, that was an amazing opportunity to bring Jennifer Connelly’s character into this film.” Connelly, for her part, gushed about the “exceptional” Cruise in an interview with Variety ahead of Top Gun: Maverick’s May 27, 2022 release. “Spending time with him, you understand how someone has been such a movie star for so many years. It was clear to me what the franchise means to him, so I felt beholden to him, [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer and the audiences who love the film so much,” Connelly said. “We focused on the intimacy of how they fit into each other’s lives. I think those characters have a really tender relationship, the way she understands him. They share a moment in bed chatting, and it tells as much about their relationship as the scene that is the preamble to that. Clearly, they have some unresolved business between them, and she navigates that with humor and playfulness. I feel like she’s someone who is positive and is moving toward happiness.” Scroll through for more from McGillis on how she feels about being excluded from Top Gun: Maverick:

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Why Wasn’t Kelly McGillis Asked to Return for 'Top Gun: Maverick'?

“I’m old, and I’m fat, and I look age-appropriate for what my age is,” McGillis told Entertainment Tonight in 2019. “And that is not what that whole scene is about. To me, I’d much rather feel absolutely in my skin and who I am at my age as opposed to placing a value on all that other stuff.”

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Does Kelly McGillis in Touch With the ‘Top Gun’ Cast?

"Movies are odd things. I don't really keep in touch with anybody," the actress told ET in 2019, noting she hadn’t watched the trailer at that point. "I think I've spoken to a couple of people occasionally, but the truth is, movies are very odd work situations because you have a lot of people who come together from all different parts of the world."

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How Does Kelly McGillis Feel About Jennifer Connelly Taking Over?

"I'm glad for her," McGillis said of Connelly.

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Where Is Kelly McGillis Now?

The actress most recently appeared on screen in the 2018 TV movie Maternal Secrets, telling ET that she made the choice to step back from Hollywood.

"I think just my priorities in life changed," she said. "It wasn't like a major decision that I made to leave, it was just that other things became more important. I love acting, I love what I do, I love doing theater, but I don't know. To me, my relationships to other people became far more important than my relationship to fame."