Iconic action star Tom Cruise had some interesting advice in response to his Edge of Tomorrow co-star Emily Blunt complaining about her armored in costume on set.
Blunt recalled how heavy the robotic suits she and Cruise wore in the 2014 sci-fi film about a future world occupied by aliens based on the 2004 Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
She said on the SmartLess podcast:
“We had to wear these enormous suits, which I think would’ve been great if we had CGI’d them, but we wanted to do it in a tactile way."
Blunt continued:
“When you hear the word ‘tactile,’ you think that sounds nice and cozy. There was nothing cozy about these suits."
"It was like 85 pounds. It was so heavy. The first time I put it on I started to cry, and [Cruise] didn’t know what to do.”
Her mounting anxiety over wearing the restrictive and heavy battle suit prompted her to articulate her concern.
“I was like, ‘Tom, I’m not sure how I’m going to get through this shoot,’ and just started to cry. I said, ‘I’m feeling a bit panicky about the whole shoot'."
Cruise replied in the moment with a very candid and, er, blunt response.
"He just stared at me for a long time, not knowing what to do, and he goes, ‘Come on, stop being such a p*ssy, OK?’”
Cruise's NSFW motivational tactic managed to elicit a chuckle from his co-star.
"And I did laugh and we got through it," said Blunt.
To argue against anyone criticizing Cruise for his choice of a misogynist slur to lighten the mood, pop culture commentator Graeme O'Neil "explained" why this was not a problem.
Tom Cruise Tells Emily Blunt To Stop Being A 'P***y' youtu.be
A majority of male commenters also shrugged their shoulders.
Many other men online thought Cruise's pep talk led to success.
You can listen to the podcast, here.
Blunt later set the record straight about her personal feelings about Cruise using misogyny to lighten the mood. Blunt said her remark was "taken literally and absurdly out of context" by some fans and certain media outlets.
She told People magazine:
"I absolutely adore Tom, he's a dear friend and he was a total gem to me."
"It was said as a joke to make me laugh, which it did in a big way."
Production designer Oliver Scholl and his team worked with lead builder Pierre Hohanna to develop the battle suits based on real-world powered exoskeleton initiatives, like the ones supported by DARPA–a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense whose innovations included developing technologies for the military.
In the film, there were three versions of battle suits called, "grunts, dogs and tanks."
While they were designed to be utilitarian, they were created in a way the actors could wear them and be able to run in them.
Edge of Tomorrow was a commercial success. It made over $370.5 million worldwide during its theatrical run against a cost of $178 million to make it.
