Angela Bassett made history as the first woman to ever deliver a mission briefing in the “Mission: Impossible” film franchise with her scene in “The Final Reckoning”
“That came to me late,” Bassett, who plays President Erika Sloane, told TheWrap’s Drew Taylor of the history-making opportunity on the “Mission: Impossible”-centered podcast “Light the Fuse.” “It’d be interesting to ask [director Christopher McQuarrie] McQ how that happened, because the movie’s done. You’ve gone on, we did the two [‘Mission: Impossible’ films’] together. So there’s a lot of expansive time that happened.”
Bassett explained that after the film was shot, she was called back in to do some automated dialogue replacement, which involves actors re-recording dialogue in a studio for voiceovers.
“And [he’s] like, ‘You got to come back and do some ADR. And maybe that was done maybe about two months ago. So very recently … No idea whatsoever,” Bassett said. “I get the pages of what I’m going to be doing the next day, and I’m looking at it and if I felt any sense of heart palpitation or whatever, it was then.”
She continued: “Because that’s iconic as much as the theme song is, as much as what we’ve come to expect from the movie. I really couldn’t believe it. I just literally said a prayer, ‘Oh, please let me do this.’ To be able to deliver this. This is a lot of weight on my shoulder.”
The award-winning actress, who also starred in “Fallout,” said that while she’d made a “big deal” about it in her head, McQuarrie helped her through it. And ultimately, the two of them were happy with the results.
“I was very proud of that. Very proud. You just want to put it in your little pocket in your life,” Bassett admitted.
Meanwhile, co-star Tom Cruise, who is known for pulling off gnarly stunts as the lead actor, told late night host Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show” that he didn’t realize he wouldn’t be able to breathe during the film’s final stunt.
“I didn’t realize, like, that amount of force of air, I can’t breathe,” he revealed. “So I had to figure out how you’re taking the wind, and you’re breathing down here like this.”
“I mean, the air particles coming off that propeller are traveling at the speed of sound, so the air is going around the fuselage like this,” Cruise continued. “And the force of the air when I got close to the fuselage was brutal.”
