The character actor who hunted down Tom Cruise in Dead Reckoning talks filming both parts back-to-back and what he wanted to do in the film.
Shea Whigham is a character actor that many may have seen in a number of different projects. He is a low-key recurring character in the Fast & Furious series as a former FBI peer of Paul Walker’s character. He’s one of David O’Russell’s collaborators who can be seen in films like Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. He’s also done a number of TV projects like Fargo and the latest incarnation of Perry Mason. Recently, Whigham was seen chasing down Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and The Hollywood Reporter sat down with him and his co-star of his upcoming film, Lake George, for an interview where he revealed a bit about the upcoming conclusion to the Mission: Impossible two-parter, which he filmed back-to-back.
Whigham states that he had wrapped on his role in the movie, but before completing his part in the project, he wanted to make a request to the writer/director Christopher McQuarrie. He tells THR,
I said to Christopher McQuarrie on [Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning]: ‘I don’t want a bigger trailer. I don’t want more money. I don’t want better catering. I just want one scene between Tom and I, where you, McQ, write it like The Usual Suspects, and we get a chance to get in there.’ And he delivered.”
He continued, “We did this scene between Tom and myself, and then Tom said, ‘We’re going to go out to dinner.’ So we went out to dinner when I was done, and then Tom said, ‘Do you realize that we come out one year from today? And it’s going to be a sprint to finish the fucking thing.’”
Whigham revealed that at the time of the interview, he’d wrapped his part ten days ago, but Cruise is still filming. He continued, “And I was like, ‘What!?’ Because we’re gone. The rest of the cast is all scattered, and he went, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be a sprint. I go all summer.’ I can’t even explain how he does the stuff that he does. What he’s doing now, people are going to be floored. He wants to make this one like an adventure film, and he and McQuarrie have an idea of what they want to do with it. So it’s going to be amazing.”
