Top Gun: Maverick truly was an important movie for audiences. It crossed a huge box office milestone during the pandemic era when people were easing back into movie theaters and wouldn’t stop making box office money. The Top Gun sequel also made an impact on the film’s main actors like Lewis Pullman, who gets real on being cast in an insane big-budget film and having Tom Cruise as a mentor.
Salem’s Lot Lewis Pullman was cast in Top Gun: Maverick as naval flight officer Bob Floyd. As Pullman’s previous film projects didn’t come close to the action-drama’s reported $170–177 million budget, he spoke to Vanity Fair about what that experience was like.
But because so much of the filming was unprecedented, it sometimes felt like we were working on a $3,000 short film. It was encouraging to see that even on a massive-scale movie like that, there was still a fire in the belly of the creative heart of the thing.
There was absolutely a lot of creativity in terms of bringing together a new story for this generation as well as the daring flight sequences. Tom Cruise and the cast went through some crazy training for those scenes that involved being plunged inside a cage deep in water and being turned upside down. The Navy trained them this way just in case pilots would ever need to be ejected from their jets and survive in the water. With Cruise being a licensed pilot himself, he came up with a three-month course for his co-stars to learn the intense maneuvers that real Top Gun pilots do. Wow, no wonder Pullman almost threw up during those wild plane rides!
As for who Lewis Pullman’s mentors are, he, of course, can’t go without saying his actor dad Bill Pullman. He mentioned to Vanity Fair that the two of them working in the same field has brought them closer. In fact, his dad gave him advice for Top Gun: Maverick in terms of encouraging him to convey the real physical movements real Top Gun pilots would use for a strong performance. On the other hand, the Lean on Pete actor also considered Tom Cruise as a mentor to him after their time working together. But as tight-knit as they are, Pullman told Vanity Fair why the Risky Business actor was left out of the cast’s group chat.
Our crew is still on a thread. Not Tom; we don’t need to bother him with all of our memes. He’s got more important stuff to do. But he’ll take a call at any point if we ever need help.
I can understand that reasoning as Tom Cruise was too busy risking his life doing insane stunts for Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. I’m sure the last thing he needs is to get notifications about shared memes despite how funny they may be. At least the licensed pilot is willing to take any calls from his co-workers. But, there should be no hard feelings about not being in the group chat as they could all reunite if a Top Gun 3 ends up being in the works. According to Lewis Pullman, what could happen with a third movie is that it may or may not come to fruition. This is all the more reason why the talented actor doesn’t want to get his hopes up if it doesn’t happen as much as he would love for him to revisit his role.
Lewis Pullman really hit the jackpot for his career having a role in Top Gun: Maverick. Not only did he get flight experience, but he found a new mentor in the form of Tom Cruise. You can watch the Memorial Day weekend hit on your Paramount+ subscription and your Amazon Prime subscription. Be sure to check out Pullman’s new TV series role in Lessons in Chemistry with the first two episodes coming to your Apple TV+ subscription on October 13th.