In the previous post to this one, Sarah wrote about Brad Pitt’s new racing movie– basically Top Gun but make it F1. Thirty-four years ago it was called Days of Thunder, although motorsport nerds will tell you in a know-it-all voice that that was NASCAR. Whatever, you get the idea.
But the Tom Cruise connections don’t end there. As Sarah pointed out, F1 director Joseph Kosinski directed Top Gun: Maverick and also worked with Tom on Oblivion. Also… well… Tom Cruise is an F1 superfan. He’s frequently in the Mercedes garage, he’s tight with Lewis Hamilton, he offered Lewis a part in Maverick.
Tom lives in London, and he was in London this weekend, seen here on Friday at the helipad. So…why wasn’t he at Silverstone? He was at Glastonbury the weekend before. Sure, sure, maybe he’s working but, come to think of it, he hasn’t been at an F1 race, I don’t think, since May 2023 in Miami when he was hanging out with Shakira. And production on the F1 movie, starring Brad Pitt, started shortly after that, which is when Brad was showing up at all the races.
Coincidence or conspiracy?
I’m asking because there’s a lot of speculation that Brad and Tom aren’t exactly cozy. They’ve worked together exactly once, on Interview With The Vampire, and did not get along. Brad has talked often about how miserable he was on that set, to the point where he tried to get out of it during production and was told that it would cost him millions of dollars.
In an interview afterwards with Premiere magazine (God I miss Premiere – the best interviews happened in Premiere; it was Premiere and Movieline back in the day), Brad said that:
“[Tom bugged me.] There came a point during filming when I started really resenting him. He’s North Pole, I’m South. He’s always coming at you with a handshake, whereas I may bump into you. There was this underlying competition that got in the way of any real conversation."
Though he did acknowledge that Tom did a great job on the film, rumours about their relationship, or lack thereof, have persisted. And when it was first announced that Brad was working on this F1 movie, there was some gossip about how Tom was side-eyeing Brad for coming into his lane.
And now it’s been a minute since Tom has appeared at the track while Brad’s all over the circuit. Maybe it’s just scheduling. Maybe Tom really didn’t have time to get the chopper going and fly the short distance to Silverstone yesterday. But … you know… Boy Sh-t is the Best Sh-t. And if this really is boy sh-t, it’s been three decades of it. So, once again, as we’ve always known, boys can keep grudges too. They might even be better at it.
