Their hard work paid off. As the internet thirsts over Miles Teller, Glen Powell and more Top Gun: Maverick stars, Us Weekly is breaking down everything that went into that quickly iconic beach scene.
The Top Gun sequel follows Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) training a new generation of pilots, including his late friend Goose’s son, Rooster (Teller), for a special mission. The film not only made box office history when it debuted in May 2022 but took over social media with fans gawking over a scene of Teller, Powell, Jay Ellis, Greg “Tarzan” Davis and their costars playing football on the beach sans shirts.
“Montages are Forever,” Powell captioned a behind-the-scenes video — set to “Man To Make Me Sweat” by Leslie Powell — of the men pumping themselves up.
The Scream Queens alum previously revealed that Cruise had the group reshoot the now-infamous scene.
“It was one of the first things we filmed. That was a great move, because you spend all this time getting into shape and it can be hard to maintain while you’re on set working these long shooting days,” Powell told Men’s Journal. “The tough thing was that we didn’t realize the filming demands of the montage, which was a lot of camera angles and long lenses. So after we’d filmed for an entire day on the beach with Tom, playing our hardest and looking our best, we thought we were done and went out that night to celebrate — drinking and eating wings and tater tots. The next morning, we found out they were only getting Tom’s angles and would be shooting the rest of us the following week. We were like, ‘What?!’”
Powell recalled the cast running “back to to the gym” before the reshoot.
“We shot that whole thing about three or four times in total. It became the running joke — ‘Time to do the beach football scene again,’” he recalled.
The football scene paid tribute to the much-talked-about volleyball scene in the OG Top Gun, in which Cruise and his castmates played the sport in jeans and no shirts.
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“I remember having to guard Tom during the beach football scene and I was blown away,” Powell continued. “I like to think I’m pretty fast, but Tom is just so fast. The fact that he’s getting close to 60 years old and is sprinting on the beach is insane. I mean, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. So when he talks about how he works out and how he eats, of course, I’m going to listen. The truth is he has tremendous discipline in all aspects of his life. He’s disciplined in how he treats his body and what he puts into his body. Tom’s diet principles — which is a lot of lean fish and veggies — make a lot of sense to me. And I don’t think there was a day when he didn’t work out.”
Scroll through to hear from more Top Gun: Maverick stars about training for the shirtless scene:
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