Top Gun Maverick: why Kelly McGillis is not in the sequel with Tom Cruise?

Fans of Tony Scott’s cult film and those who lived through the 1980s know it, the shock wave Top Gun ignited cinemas and dance floors to the sound of the hit “Take My Breathe Away” from Berlin. Released in May 1986, the blockbuster mixing action, romance, fighter jets and leather jackets propelled Tom Cruise in the firmament of Hollywood. But if the star and a good part of the cast of the time return to Top Gun: Maverick, in theaters on May 25, a rookie is missing. In effect, Kelly McGilliswhich camped Charlotte Blackwood, known as “Charlie”, is not part of the distribution.

In the first part, Kelly McGillis embodied a teacher and astrophysicist, but above all the ‘love interest’ of the daredevil hero, the pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, played by Tom Cruise. A movie couple as cult as Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray in dirty dancing, released a year later in 1987. But why didn’t the actress reprise her role? The latter had given her answer during the filming of this sequel, postponed because of the pandemic. Behind his absence, an assumed choice: “I’m old, I’m fat, I look like my age… And that doesn’t work in this job. But I much prefer to feel good about myself, to be sure of who I am at my age, than to place any value on all these things..”, confided the 64-year-old actress.

Kelly McGillis discarded for script purposes

After the success of Top Gun, Kelly McGillis has gradually retired from the big screenplaying the role of the lawyer of the character of Jodie Foster in The accused in 1988, and more recently a small role in the series The L Word. But this distancing from the seventh art is not the only reason for the deletion of his character. All as Meg Ryanwho lent his features to the wife of Goose (Anthony Edwards), the two actresses would have been excluded for the purposes of the scenario: “They weren’t in the stories we envisioned… I didn’t want the script to constantly look backwards. It was important to introduce new characters.“, admitted the director Joseph Kosinsky in an interview with Insider. The filmmaker’s choice fell on Jennifer Connelly, who will play Pete’s new companion “Maverick”. The latter will play Penny Benjamin, “the admiral’s daughter“, a character mentioned in the dialogues of the first film, with whom the hero would have had an affair. Top Gun: Maverick will be broadcast this May 18 on the Croisette out of competition.

Loading-widget

Subscribe to the Telestar.fr Newsletter to receive the latest news for free