Tom Cruise Pays For Top Gun: Maverick Co-Star’s Pilot Training

Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell reveals Tom Cruise paid for his real-life pilot training. Powell was first in the competition with Teller for the role of Goose’s son. Ultimately, Teller was cast as Bradley, but a report suggested that producer Jerry Bruckheimer and the team at Paramount were so impressed with Powell, that they cast him as the character Hangman, and reportedly made his part in the film bigger as well.

Glen revealed on Instagram this week that he was a certified pilot after months of training.

“Try not falling in love with aviation after living out every pilot’s dream while shooting @topgunmovie. Especially when you see the way @tomcruise flexes it,” Glen, 31, wrote on Instagram. “After wrapping a shooting day, Tom would rocket off into the sunset in his P-51 while I would limply shuffle into the cast van. The wings were just so much cooler than the wheels.”

Once Christmas rolled around, Glen said, “Tom bought me an iPad with my flight school downloaded and prepaid. And yesterday, after months of flying, studying, and testing…I’m the real deal.”

While boasting about his accomplishment, Glen posted an Instagram video showing him high-fiving his flight instructor and celebrating.

“This is a video of me after my first solo flight. It’s a tradition in the aviation community for your instructor to tear away your shirt signifying that teacher’s finally ‘off your back,'” Glen said. “My instructor @wallysaygers is just following the ceremony, he doesn’t rip off my clothes after every flight.”

After thanking many who helped him get his pilot’s license, Glen thanked Tom for “being my hype man every step of the way.”

He added, “If you’re looking for me, look [up].”

“The movie is in really, really good shape,” Glen told People magazine last month. “I have never felt more confident about people being so pleased with what we’ve put out in this movie. I know there’s a lot of expectation on it, but obviously, the pressure’s a privilege, and I think we did it.”

Superstar Tom Cruise is gearing up to return to two of his most beloved properties in the next few years, Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible 7 and 8, which will release back to back in 2021 and 2022.

First up, though, is Top Gun: Maverick, which sees Cruise’s Peter “Maverick” Mitchell return, over thirty years later, and as seen in the trailers, the character still feels the “need for speed,” but now he is also helping teach a new batch of fighter pilots.

The sequel will see Cruise’s character take on somewhat of a mentor role, and will bring in new faces such as Miles Teller, who plays the son of Goose, and Powell.

The Top Gun sequel is said to be “a love letter to aviation,” and fans know how keen Cruise is to ensure things are done practically in his films, so the actors in this sequel had to be able to handle conditions of flying in the F/A-18 fighter jets. However, Powell not only got inspired by Cruise’s ability to fly a fighter jet; he also got a helping hand from the star himself to “Feel the need.”

Cruise is famous for being an incredible co-star, as not only does he fully invest himself in his stunts and roles, he is known for ensuring his co-stars are also ready and able for the often intense rigors they have to go through shooting his style of films. However, this latest gesture simply takes the superstar’s stock even higher, as it is an incredibly kind gesture that Cruise did not have to do for Powell, and what’s even nicer, is at the very end of Powell’s post, he thanks Cruise for being his “hype man every step of the way.”