'Oh My God, This Is Just Too Iconic:' Brad Pitt Dropped Some Major Names While Telling Stories To His F1 Co-Star, And I Would Love To Have Been A Fly On That Wall

Brad Pitt in F1
(Image credit: Apple / Warner Bros.)

When it comes to 2025 movies, there are few titles that we’re more excited about than the release of F1. It’s helmed by Joseph Kosinski, the director who made Top Gun: Maverick, and it looks like it will be a thrilling big-screen experience that really has Brad Pitt and Damson Idris in the driver seat of Formula One racing cars. As we wait for the movie, Idris shared what it was really like to share the screen with Pitt.

In the movie, Damson Idris plays a fictional F1 driver named Joshua Pierce, who is a rookie in F1 on his way to glory. Brad Pitt will play Sonny Hayes, a former F1 driver who left the profession 30 years prior after being in a horrible crash. Here’s how the pair’s dynamic was like on set, per Idris:

It was a seamless dynamic between us. As soon as they'd yell 'Cut,' we both sat at our seats and giggled. He'd be telling me stories of when he first met Prince and Sidney Poitier. And I'm like, 'Oh my God, this is just too iconic, you're a walking monument.'

Whoa, can you even imagine? I wish I could have heard these stories and seeing the burgeoning actor's reactions.

Damson Idris is a 33-year-old who has been in just a handful of movies thus far, and never as big as F1. It sounds like he was pinching himself around Brad Pitt. As if getting to star alongside him wasn’t enough, the pair apparently really got along while making the movie, and the Oscar winner even would name-drop some major names when they had some down time between shooting scenes.

During Idris’ interview with People, he recalled Pitt speaking to his experience meeting the late great Prince and Sidney Poitier, and obviously Idris’ jaw was dropped. We don’t know a lot about Brad Pitt’s connection with Prince except the pair were once photographed together having a conversation while they were both at a charity event in Los Angeles back in 2005.

In terms of Poitier, who was the first Black actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor, they posed together at the Inglourious Basterds premiere back in 2009, so they were acquainted somehow as well. With Brad Pitt being as famous as he is since the ‘90s, he clearly has a lot of amazing stories to tell, and he apparently did not hold back when hanging out with Damson Idris on F1.

F1 in of itself has a murderers row of celebrities among the cast given Javier Bardem is also in the movie with Kerry Condon, and F1 legend Lewis Hamilton serves as a producer. Surely Idris felt like he was really living on the dream with this role, and he’s not slowing down anytime soon. After he does press with Pitt and F1 hits theaters on June 27, Idris is also set to be part of the Children Of Blood And Bone cast with Viola Davis, Idris Elba and Cynthia Erivo. The engines are revving on his career!

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Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.

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