Danny Ramirez Talks Breaking ‘The Glass Ceiling’ With Top Gun: Maverick And How Insane It Was Filming Those Scenes In The Air

Danny Ramirez in Top Gun: Maverick
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)

Actor Danny Ramirez is still in the early years of his career, but he's already soared to some pretty high heights – pun most definitely intended. Last year he made his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe playing Joaquin Torres in the Disney+ original series The Falcon In The Winter Solider (a role he is set to reprise in the upcoming Captain America: New World Order), and this summer he had a supporting role in the biggest movie of the season: Joseph Kosinski's Top Gun: Maverick

He appears to have a very bright future ahead of him, and it's all the more exciting because of the way that he learned to push himself in the making of the hit 2022 movie.

Speaking with ComicBookMovie, Danny Ramirez reflected on his experiencing working on Top Gun: Maverick and performing while flying in airborne jets, and he explained that it required him to break through a personal glass ceiling as a performer. It was a multitasking effort, and the challenge was in doing everything right at exactly the right time. Said the actor,

Filming in the air shows you the extent of what you can handle. And it breaks through this glass ceiling. You think you had this cap, but then you burst through it, and we had to wear seven different hats when we were up there. We had to clean our visors. We had to make sure make-up was done. We had to memorize our lines. We had to memorize what line is coming out when depending on the sun and where in the route, and what part of the mountain we were in order for it to edit with the other sequences within that same moment. So if we missed the beat, it would be obvious that we said that line in a different place when Rooster was flying in that third act.

On a normal movie set, performers are surrounded by department heads and crewmembers dedicated to specific details of the production and making sure that everything is perfect, but that doesn't really work when an actor is sitting in the cockpit of a plane flying through the air at high speed. The responsibilities of a team because the responsibilities of an individual, and it sounds like Danny Ramirez took that very seriously in the making of Top Gun: Maverick

Continuing, the Falcon And The Winter Soldier actor expressed that he expects that his work on the Tom Cruise movie will impact how he works in the future. Making Top Gun: Maverick raised his awareness of what he can do as an actor, and it sounds like the movie may have also started a more permanent appreciation of aviation. Said Ramirez,

So everything had to be a precise watch and so being able to then do the precise watch thing and then also pour your heart and soul into it, to me, opens up the possibilities of what I could possibly do. And I think the rest of my work is going to benefit from it, and anything that has to do with g-forces and/or flight is also going to benefit from it. Whatever that may be, whether it's my private pilot's license or another part of my career.

Danny Ramirez has had a busy 2022 on beyond his work as Lt. Mickey 'Fanboy' Garcia in Top Gun: Maverick. Those looking for something spooky to watch this Halloween should check out No Exit (available with a Hulu subscription), and he has key roles in the Netflix original Look Both Ways and the new thriller Root Letter. He is in the new Claire Denis film Stars At Noon, which comes out this October, and plays the male lead in the "La Doña" episode of the horror anthology series Tales Of The Walking Dead.

Top Gun: Maverick is still playing in theaters nationwide (it ranked sixth at the box office this weekend), and you can learn about all of the movies still to come out this year via our 2022 Movie Release Calendar.

Eric Eisenberg
Assistant Managing Editor

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.