Twitter users fall down a rabbit hole of old Tom Cruise interviews as cringeworthy clip goes viral

Tom Cruise is an actor who gives 110% in literally everything he does, from his stuntwork to his press tours — which he recently called the closest he gets to taking a vacation. However, when you go as hard into the paint as Tom does for the media, sometimes that leads to interviews that can come off as a little – scary.

In 2005, reporter Peter Overton, while conducting a 60 Minutes interview with Tom Cruise, decided to push the subject of whether Cruise’s then-recent divorce from Nicole Kidman made him feel bad. The legendarily-intense actor pushed back, resulting in a back-and-forth as dramatic as anything in A Few Good Men.

The clip resurfaced this week on the feed of Twitter user “robert franco, wandering ronin,” as the omnipresent press push for Top Gun: Maverick has placed Tom Cruise squarely into the spotlight:

The interview reached a nadir of awkwardness after Overton asked Cruise if he felt that Nicole Kidman was “the love of his life,” with Cruise responding:

“Listen. We raised children… I, er…. You know, I mean…. How do you answer? How do you answer that question? She someone that I, uh, I, er… “

Before attempting to change the subject by saying, “You know, I plan on getting married again.”

When Tom began pushing back, Overton tried to explain that it was a subject other people wanted to know about. This made Cruise snap:

“Peter. Peter. You want to know. Take responsibility for what you want to know. Don’t say ‘what other people.’ This is a conversation I am having with you right now.”

The resurfaced clip prompted other Twitter users to reminisce about other strange Tom Cruise interviews that went awry, including this time that a prankster decided to get Cruise on the red carpet with the old squirting microphone trick. It didn’t go so well, with Tom talking to the joker like he was a naughty dog that had made a mess on the rug:

“Sal Gorlami” wasn’t kidding, that trickster looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and die. And who can blame Tom Cruise? The man is just doing his job and suddenly he gets a face full of water.

Of course, if there’s anyone who won’t have sympathy for Tom Cruise, it’s Oprah’s poor, abused couch: