Jake Johnson is most known for his role on Fox’s New Girl, but the sitcom star landed a role of a lifetime in the hit Tom Cruise movie The Mummy. So how did Johnson prepare for the movie? Well for one, he started going to the gym, but he wasn’t sure how to do it. Luckily, Tom Cruise was there to help him.
“People have told me in the past, including New Girl, that I need to lose weight and stay in shape,” Johnson told Thrillist. “But they don’t tell me how. It’s like, ‘Hey tubbo, fit into these slacks!’ Tom said, ‘I really want you fit for this movie.’ I literally thought I was going to have to call [New Girl costar] Max Greenfield to do Crossfit. But Tom said, ‘You’ll be training with me and my trainers. If you want I’ll put you on a food plan with my chef. The food is great.’ And the food was great.”
But it was not all protein shakes and sit-ups. Things can get kind of intense when Tom Cruise is your workout partner. Cruise said Johnson could use his personal gym whenever he wanted. But, what happens when your workout partner is an A-list actor?
“One day I [went] to work out and one of the [assistant directors] goes, ‘You can’t go in right now because Tom is working out,'” he said. “I thought, ‘That sucks, I got here an hour early to get this in, but he’s Tom Cruise.’ After, when we were shooting later that day, he said, ‘What happened to you? I thought you said you were going to work out this morning?’ I told him I was told not to bother him, and he got really pissed. He said, ‘Let me make something crystal clear: I don’t care what anybody on the crew says to you, they don’t know what I’m saying to you. And I’m saying to you that you are always welcome. I don’t care what I’m doing in there. You’re not other. You’re my castmate. Come in.’ He’s the best.”
Johnson had to make some minor adjustments working with Tom Cruise. In fact, he would have to jump through fire.
“[Tom] does his own stunts,” Johnson said of Cruise. “I read the first act [of the movie] and it’s like, ‘Nick and Vail jump off a three story building as it explodes, they feel the heat on their backs.’ And when you read those little things somebody has to actually do that. That meant the fire would be touching us! That meant I was jumping through fire and I was like, ‘I don’t want to jump through fire!’ [But Tom convinced me,] he said things like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be really hard and you’re going to be really scared and you’re going to get hurt. You’re going to work your ass off. I think you should do this.’ So the answer was a very easy yes.”
Sounds like working with Tom Cruise is unlike anything else in the world.
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