Miles Teller felt the need for speed on Top Gun: Maverick. However, the movie cashed some checks his body could barely cash. Check out the trailer below:
Tom Cruise is the ultimate movie star. He's one of our greatest living actors, he's a bit of an enigma, and over the past 20 years, his exploits have become legendary, whether it's climbing the Burj Khalifa or driving a motorbike off a massive cliffside ramp.
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For the most part, he's been the main action hero. Those in his orbit may be expected to muck in a bit, but not to the same death-defying extent - that is, until Top Gun 2, which pushed its fresh-faced cast and their stomachs to the edge.
The long-awaited sequel sees Cruise return as Maverick, still clinging onto his Captain rank and rankling those above him.
Iceman (Val Kilmer), now a high-ranking admiral, orders him back to Top Gun to train a team of cocky graduates for a mission the likes of which nobody has ever seen - even the top one percent, the elite.
This includes Rooster (Teller), the resentful son of the late Goose, whose history with Maverick is more complicated than you might think.
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LADbible sat down with Teller ahead of the movie's release. Maverick boasts the finest aerial photography ever put to screen - but that came at a price.
The cast underwent a five-month training course devised by Cruise himself to prepare them for the intense G-force, which they'd have to withstand while handling their own cameras in the skies.
Teller said it's made him cherish the small things; like a quiet, everyday commercial flight. "If anything I think it made me really appreciate how nice it is not to have to, you know, go 500 knots an hour all the time. I like a flight with very minimal G exposure," he said, laughing.
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The actor was candid about the fear he experienced while soaring, plummeting and spinning in an F-18 hornet jet. "I definitely had a moment where I thought I was going to die," he revealed.
"There was a sequence where we were heading straight towards the ground and you do what’s called a max G pull-up.
"You’re heading down and at the last second you yank up, and it’s really tough for the pilot.
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"It’s something they train in all the time, but it was the first time we’d done a manoeuvre like that and I completely stopped acting. I looked at the ground, and thought this wasn’t going to end well for me."
And yet, Teller didn't puke once during the movie's production - the same cannot be said for his bag-grabbing co-stars.
He said: "I think when there’s that much adrenaline and a healthy bit of fear, I was able to hold it down. I guess that’s a secret skill I have."
Teller isn't exactly a stranger to going the extra mile for authenticity: Whiplash is as much a drumming showcase as it as acting; he drastically dropped his body fat percentage for Bleed for This; and he went through a 10-day firefighting bootcamp for Only the Brave.
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Top Gun: Maverick has opened the door to more stunt-heavy projects for Teller, but he's not aiming for Cruise's calibre of daredevilry.
He said: "I think the reason why Tom does this stuff is because when the audience knows that it’s really you and there’s no cutaways, that the level of immersion you get as a viewer, as a voyeur, is elevated.
"So I’m open to it, but also, I’ve got injured on some films doing some weird things, and when you have a perfectly good stunt guy, I don’t want to put him out of a job, you know? That’s just me being an honest guy."
Maverick tested him physically, but what was tougher: staying in character while his skull and spine were being compressed under five Gs; or having JK Simmons threatening to 'f**k him like a pig' and slapping and screaming in his face in Whiplash?
He said: "I mean, JK is a teddy bear, man. He’s really good at playing that stuff. We had so much making that movie that I could barely tell how intense it was.
"The G tolerance is something I felt every time I did it. At least when JK was yelling at me, I didn’t feel like I was gonna throw up the entire time."
Top Gun: Maverick is out now.
Cameron Frew