Emily Blunt Nearly Killed Tom Cruise While Filming ‘Edge of Tomorrow’
Those who have watched Tom Cruise’s stunt-heavy movies in recent years may genuinely wonder if the actor has some sort of death wish. At the very least, he seems to have an unchecked daredevil streak. Now, one of his co-stars, Emily Blunt, talks about the moment she thought she killed him.
Ironically enough, this wasn’t one of the increasingly death-defying Mission: Impossible movies, but a movie relatively few people saw: Edge of Tomorrow.
What was Edge of Tomorrow?
If you don’t recognize the title, that’s because Warner Bros. has marketed the movie as Live, Die, Repeat on home media, with that title being more descriptive of the movie’s plot than its theatrical title. Cruise plays a military officer who is more skilled in public relations than with combat. Nevertheless, he gets sucked into fighting an alien invasion.
But there’s a wrinkle: Cruise’s character gets caught in a time loop. Every time he dies, he’s forced to start the day over again. So it’s basically a sci-fi action twist on the classic Bill Murray comedy Groundhog Day. Blunt plays a special forces fighter who helps Cruise improve his combat skills.
Directed by Doug Liman of The Bourne Identity fame, the movie underperformed at the box office, making just over $100 million at the US box office, and that’s on the low end of Cruise’s action pictures. That was considered a disappointment since the movie scored strong reviews. When it hit home video, the Live, Die, Repeat title was favored because there was some thought that the soap opera-like title Edge of Tomorrow did the movie no favors. All the same, more people discovered it after it left theaters.
How did Emily Blunt almost ‘kill’ Tom Cruise?
Unlike Cruise’s Mission: Impossible movies, Edge of Tomorrow didn’t boast a particular “OMG” stunt sequence that made you think Tom Cruise might die in the real world. But when working on the movie, Blunt feared she got too close for comfort.
According to the Daily Mail, Blunt gave an interview about an action scene that didn’t go quite right. When the director called for a second take, she was told to ‘go a bit faster.’ Paradoxically, Cruise thought this was a bad idea.
She recalled: “I tear down this part and Tom’s being very quiet behind me I hear him under his breath as I approach the right-hand turn, going ‘Brake, brake, brake. Brake. Brake, brake, brake… Oh God. Brake, brake, brake. Brake it hard! Brake hard!’
“I left it too late, and so drove us into a tree … I almost killed Tom Cruise.'”
What are Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt doing next?
Blunt may have been exaggerating a bit, but the moment was all the more disquieting because Blunt was pregnant at the time. She wasn’t showing at that moment and had to explain that was why she hadn’t been leaning too hard into the stunts. Blunt’s become quite experienced with action scenes thanks to movies like Sicario and A Quiet Place.
The sequel to A Quiet Place is now scheduled to come out on Labor Day weekend, having been delayed by the pandemic. Blunt’s summer movie, Disney’s Jungle Cruise with Dwayne Johnson, got pushed back to next year.
As for Cruise, he was working on the seventh Mission: Impossible movie when the lockdown hit. In December, audiences can see him in Maverick, the long-awaited sequel to one of his signature hits, Top Gun. Meanwhile, his daredevil streak only continues with Cruise announcing his intention to film an action sequence in space, according to The Verge. Perhaps he should reunite with Blunt on that one so he can finally prove his mettle.
