Everyone has a great Tom Cruise story, but his Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning co-star, Hayley Atwell, has what is quite possibly the most awkward memory of the time she and the Hollywood icon were getting to know each other on the set of 2023’s Dead Reckoning.
In an interview with Sirius XM before Mission: Impossible 8 landed on the 2025 movie schedule, Atwell, who may or may not be in Avengers: Doomsday, recalled a story from the set of the 2023 action thriller. She and her pet French bulldogs had a movie night to watch Shane and other movies in an attempt to build rapport with her co-star. And to her surprise, the dogs immediately got close to Cruise. Maybe a little too close, as she recalled:
They just, I think it's very telling about a character, like someone's character, if dogs or animals are drawn to you 'cause they've got no polite filter. It's raw. It's immediate, and they really loved him, and so they kind of insist on sitting on him for the duration of the film, but anyone who has a French bulldog knows that they are particularly potent.
Anyone with dogs, or who has spent a decent amount of time with some pooches, knows that pups can sometimes have the foulest, grossest, and most pungent farts in the animal kingdom. As the movie went on, Atwell began to notice that her pets were treating the biggest name in Hollywood as the personal farting gallery.
But here’s the thing. While Atwell noticed and was embarrassed by her Frenchies filling the air with repugnant and most likely meaty scents, Cruise didn’t know anything about it until she told him in quite possibly the most embarrassing way:
Tom, completely oblivious, so polite, would never comment on anything, and so towards the end of the film, I just turned to him and I couldn't say farting, I couldn't say it, so I just went [in a cowboy accent], ‘Sorry for all the tooting,’ and he was like oblivious, but also looking at me like, ‘What's the accent about?’ and I was like, it was so weird what came out of my mouth. It was more awkward than the dogs farting.
First off, the second-hand embarrassment I’m getting from this story is enough to make me want to crawl into a hole, and I’m not even the one who experienced this awkward encounter. Secondly, what is that accent? If you haven’t already, go back and watch the clip linked above. Maybe it was because they were watching one of the greatest Western movies ever made, or maybe it was just a random fluke.
Though the whole “farting on the most famous actor in the world” situation may not make Atwell’s dogs the best pets in Hollywood history, they at least gave us a hilarious (and hilariously uncomfortable) story for the ages. At least she didn’t steal his socks this time.
It all seemed to have worked out, as Atwell would not only go on to finish Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, she would also have a major part in The Final Reckoning, which is still playing in theaters nationwide.
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