Tom Cruise Revives His Risky Business Dance in the Jennifer Hudson Show Tunnel
Tom Cruise has never met a hallway he couldn't turn into a stage. On Wednesday (Sept. 30), the movie star visited The Jennifer Hudson Show, put on his signature Ray-Ban sunglasses, and dusted off his Risky Business dance moves for the show's spirit tunnel.
Dressed all in black, Cruise spun, bopped and kicked his way down the carpet, pulling several staffers into the dance as the crew cued up Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll" — now with Cruise-centric lyrics.
"We've got Tom Cruise at the Happy Place. He's in the tunnel walking to the stage... He's a legend everybody knows. We've got that Tom Cruise rock 'n' roll."
It was Cruise's first visit to the syndicated talk show, part of the press tour for Digger, the environmental-apocalypse drama directed by Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu. The film, out Friday (Oct. 2), finds Cruise disappearing into the role of Texas oilman Digger Rockwell, whose company sparks an ecological disaster that could end in nuclear apocalypse.
Digger's divided reviews
Some critics say the film might finally win Cruise his first competitive Oscar, while others have gone for the jugular. The Boston Globe gave it 0 out of 4 and called it the "worst movie" of his career; The Hollywood Reporter called it "a climate crisis satire so smug and bombastic it makes Adam McKay's Don't Look Up seem almost innocuous"; the New York Post dubbed it Cruise's "first real stinker in nearly 10 years," predicting audiences will "want to leave after the first five minutes."
Sitting down with Hudson for the full hour, Cruise also remembered meeting Prince William as a child on the set of Mission: Impossible and reuniting with the prince and Princess Kate at the recent London premiere — and he teased Top Gun 3. The Digger cast also includes Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg and Emma D'Arcy.
Cruise has been in full press mode for months. He opened the run in July with a pump-up speech at the FIFA World Cup final at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, and more recently dropped by the Kansas City Chiefs' season opener, where he hung out with Taylor Swift — who, he said, "schooled" him on football, and whom he called a "genius."