Simon Pegg says he’s increasingly terrified of Tom Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible’ stunts

As the badass spy Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible films, Tom Cruise has done everything from hanging from an airborne plane to actually scaling the Burj Khalifa. He has even teased that Mission Impossible 7 is set to feature more of such heart-stopping action scenes. While the 59-year-old actor has no plans of ceasing his death-defying stunts in the films, his co-star Simon Pegg has admitted that he is downright terrified whenever Cruise chooses to perform the dangerous scenes on his own.

Simon Pegg, who portrays IMF technician Benji Dunn in the Mission Impossible films, will mark his fifth appearance in the franchise with the upcoming seventh film in the series. Pegg has already seen Tom Cruise performing risky action sequences countless times instead of letting a stunt double take his place. 

But he has revealed in a chat with Radio Times that the actors’ stunts in Mission Impossible 7 and Mission Impossible 8 are even scarier. In fact, last year, Tom Cruise was spotted performing yet another dangerous stunt for his upcoming films- dangling upside down from the wing of a warplane while it was at the height of 2000 feet.

“Oh it’s absurd. I mean, the stuff he did for [Mission: Impossible] 7 was just kind of terrifying! As we always do, it’s like, how are you going to do more than that? And then I just saw footage of what he’s doing for 8 and it just terrifies me. I just hope they pay me anyway, you know?”

Mission: Impossible 7 was originally supposed to hit the theaters back in July 2021, but due to COVID-19 pandemic-related complications, the filming was delayed multiple times. Though the film’s production has officially wrapped and it’s now scheduled for a theatrical release on July 14, 2023, Pegg has shared that there are still some loose ends that need to be tied up. 

“Because we’re doing 7 and 8 back-to-back, it’s meant that we can be quite flexible. So there are things that will need to be finished. You know, 7 is pretty much tied up, but there’ll be stuff that we return to and also kind of maybe even change, I don’t know, but we have that luxury because we’re going on to make 8 now. So yeah, 7 I think is pretty much wrapped up!”

It was recently confirmed that Paramount Pictures had switched back to its earlier plans of filming Mission Impossible 7 and Mission Impossible 8 back-to-back, something which it had initially ditched due to the pandemic-induced delays. Hopefully, the production schedule of Ethan Hunt’s next adventure will go smoothly without any hiccups, allowing the eighth film to grace the cinemas on June 28, 2024.