For many actors, simply being in a movie with Tom Cruise is a really big deal. He’s one of the last great movie stars, and by all accounts he’s a really nice guy and his movies are lots of fun. However, being in a movie with Tom Cruise is the gift that keeps on giving, because once you are, you join a very exclusive Christmas list, and Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell throws a party to celebrate his Christmas gift.
It’s clear that simply being in the sequel to Top Gun was a huge deal for the cast, but being in a Tom Cruise movie means you are officially on the “the list.” As Glen Powell recently explained on The Jennifer Hudson Show. People who have been in movies with Tom Cruise get sent a cake by the actor every Christmas. According to Powell the cake is special both for being from Cruise, and apparently also being quite delicious, so he throws a party specifically so that his friends and family can experience the cake. Powell explains…
It’s a very famous thing. If you’ve worked with Tom Cruise, or done a Tom Cruise movie you get this Tom Cruise cake and over the course of time it’s turned into this global operation where every Christmas he’ll send out, I don’t know how many, could be thousands, I have no idea how many cakes go out, but it’s the most delicious cake you’ve ever had. It’s like a coconut bundt cake. My friends that have tried it, they love it so much that they hit up right around December 1st, like ‘Hey, has it arrived yet?’ So now I have a party at my house where I’ll have the Cruise cake. It’s my Cruise Cake Party, and I’ll invite people over to try a bite or two of the Cruise cake.
While Top Gun: Maverick was only released this year, to massive success, the film saw significant delays due to the global pandemic, so Glen Powell has experienced the holiday season a couple of times since making the film. It’s actually pretty cool that the cake itself, being a Tom Cruise holiday tradition, has now spawned a new holiday tradition for Glen Powell.
Powell calls the Cruise cake a “global operation” and it must be. Tom Cruise has been in dozens of movies with thousands of people and while it seems unlikely that literally every person in the cast and crew of every movie gets a cake, even if only the primary cast and key behind the camera crew get one, that’s still going to be hundreds or thousands of cakes at this point, and every year Cruise needs to add a few more cakes as the man has yet to slow down making movies. Mission: Impossible 8 is in production right now, so there may be a few people getting their first Cruise cake this season.
The rest of us will have to celebrate the holiday season with Tom Cruise only by going back to theaters to see Top Gun: Maverick.