June 21, 2023
Simon Pegg has a 'nail-biting' moment when Tom Cruise rode a motorbike off the cliff in the viral stunt in the upcoming Mission Impossible movie.
"All the cast that were in Norway at the time, we all went up there together," adding, "It was a genuinely nail-biting experience."
The awe-inspiring stunt occurred in Norway's Helsetkopen mountain on Sep. 6, 2020.
The 60-year-old dropped from 4,000 feet and opened his parachute only 500 feet from the ground.
"Obviously, you hear the idea, and you get an idea of what it is in your head," the British actor continued. "But it wasn't until I got up there on the mountain that I realized just how death-defyingly awesome the whole thing was.
For all his preparation, for all the parachute jumps he did, for all the motocross training he did, there is still always a degree of uncertainty with something like that."
"He went off the cliff and then vanished out of shot, and we just stood there and waited for the radio to tell us he was okay and that his shoot was open," the actor said.
He continued, "That gap between his vanishing behind the rock to that radio message felt like an eternity. We could be facing losing our leading man. It was genuinely a fear. But, my god, it was exciting."
Pegg, who played Benji Dunn in the franchise, added that the megastar also delivered dialogue in the midst of the deadly stunt.
"When we see the stunt in the trailers, all we see is Tom go off and go down," the actor said.
"Tom delivers a line in free fall. I mean, who's ever done that? Who's ever BASE-jumped and acted at the same time? Nobody."
Meanwhile, Pegg first appeared in 2006's Mission Impossible III.