Thandie Newton recently spoke out about a “nightmare” day on the set of Mission Impossible 2, no thanks to her co-star Tom Cruise. Now, the Westworld actress, 47, has said she doesn’t regret speaking out about the Hollywood heavyweight’s odd behavior. “I have nothing to lose,” she said on our sister site Variety‘s podcast The Big Ticket. “I was surprised by the appreciation I had got. I thought that I would be in trouble because that’s kind of what I’m used to.”
She added, “I am not even supposed to be viable anymore. I am a Black woman, from a conventional stereotype. A 47-year-old black woman, I shouldn’t even be able to get a job.” Thandie went on to credit her role in the mega-popular HBO series Westworld for helping her stay “relevant” and current. “There is such a quick turnover; people aren’t famous enough to reveal things and have people listen. Once someone pops out of their fame, people are no longer going to pay attention, they are not going to listen.”
While she didn’t discuss specific details about her Tom comments, she did admit that it felt good to finally speak up. “I felt solid. That whole time… That I know that it made people frightened. Individuals were very frightened at what might happen,” she claimed. In a candid interview with New York magazine, published on July 6, Thandie talked about her experience with Tom on the set of the iconic 2000 action movie.
“I was so scared of Tom,” she explained, having portrayed the love interest, Nyah Nordoff-Hall, opposite Tom’s IMF secret spy Ethan Hunt. “He was a very dominant individual. He tries super hard to be a nice person. But the pressure. He takes on a lot,” she said of the Top Gun actor. “And I think he has this sense that only he can do everything as best as it can be done.”
She also discussed filming on scene with him on a balcony in Spain. “Tom was not happy with what I was doing because I had the sh**iest lines. And he gets so frustrated with having to try and explain that he goes, ‘Let me just — lets just go do it. Let’s just rehearse on-camera.’ So we rehearsed and they recorded it, and then he goes, ‘I’ll be you. You be me,” Thandie explained. “So, we filmed the entire scene with me being him — because, believe me, I knew the lines by then — and him playing me.”