Tom Cruise broke out his “Risky Business” dance moves (and those black Ray-Ban sunglasses) for “The Jennifer Hudson Show’s” highly anticipated walk through the Spirit Tunnel.
The talk show will be Cruise’s final stop on the press tour for “Digger,” directed by two-time Academy Award-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu. in it Diversity In her Power of Women cover story, Hudson revealed that she had booked the movie star as a guest during an exchange meeting at this summer’s World Cup final.
“‘Tom, can you imagine Soul Tunnel? What do you think they’ll say about you?’ “I thought,” said Hudson, as he shot.
For the uninitiated: “The Jennifer Hudson Show’s” soul tunnel is a pre-show segment where the cast lines the hallway of Warner Bros. Studio 1 sings a special song to welcome each celebrity guest to the stage. Luckily for Hudson, Cruise knew what he was signing up for — “I’m watching the show, Jennifer,” he told her. “I watch everything. I watched you on ‘American Idol’.”
In the video shared on social media on Tuesday, Cruise can be seen exiting his dressing room to find the cast of “The Jennifer Hudson Show” rocking black sunglasses and singing the classic song “Old Time Rock & Roll.”
The song recalls one of Cruise’s early movie star moments from the 1983 film “Risky Business”; Here Cruise enters the frame, lip-syncs and dances to Bob Seger’s version of the song while wearing underwear and sunglasses.
Here, the talk show producers rearranged the lyrics to reference Cruise’s status as a movie legend: “The Happy Place has Tom Cruise. He’s walking down the tunnel to the stage,” the crew sings. “He’s a legend that everyone knows. We’ve got Tom Cruise’s rock and roll.”
Cruise immediately jumps in, takes off his own black sunglasses and dances, even inviting some employees to join him. (Of course, some of the hand clapping is unusual, but Cruise is as cheerfully game here as when he performed his own stunts in the “Mission: Impossible” movies.)
Likewise, “Digger,” opening Friday, is a major test of Cruise’s dedication. In the film, he plays Digger Rockwell, a Texas oil tycoon whose company may have caused an ecological disaster that could also lead to a nuclear war. The role required Cruise to transform with prosthetics (including a fat suit and thinning white hair) and a Southern accent, but the mostly absurdist satire required his entire acting range. The result is a theatrical spectacle that seems designed to put Cruise back into the competitive Oscar race for the first time in decades.
Cruise said of starring in the dark comedy: “I’ve never had anything to challenge me in that way, and neither has Alejandro.”
Warner Bros. The film gained great momentum and reviews were wide-ranging (including diversity), so the studio went on the offensive, countering the negative rumors with a new commercial that included both positive and negative reactions, and moviegoers “made up their own mind.”
Viewers will have to wait until Wednesday to see Cruise’s full interview, but you can watch his entire Spirit Tunnel performance in the clip below: