This might be one of the coolest stamps of approval you can get. Tom Cruise stopped by NCIS: Origins‘ set on October 15, and the cast and crew couldn’t have been more thrilled. After all, the CBS drama’s bar is inspired by the one in Top Gun.
Executive producer David J. North shared the news himself on Instagram the following day with a series of photos and videos from the set of Cruise’s visit. “As we kick off a new season of Origins, it was awesome to have @tomcruise stop by yesterday to hang out and show so much support to our show and the entire @ncisverse. @ginalucita and I took inspo from the bar in Top Gun when we dreamt up our bar, Daly’s. So we were stoked he approved lol. Thanks for all the advice and the love, Tom,” he wrote in the caption.
And so when TV Insider recently spoke with the NCIS: Origins showrunners, North and Gina Lucita Monreal, we had to ask about that visit.
“It was really, really exciting for us and our crew,” North told us. “He was just incredibly supportive of the show and the franchise and we got to spend quite a bit of time with him both on the sets and took him over to our set for dailies because Gina and I, as I told him, had patterned that bar after the bar in Top Gun and he said, ‘I’m going, I want to see it.’ So, we walked over there, and it was really great.”
North also talked about the advice Cruise offered not just to him but also to the actors on the show, specifically Caleb Foote, who plays Randy.
“Caleb asked him about doing stunts, and Caleb said he stubs his fingers a lot when he does stunts and he wonders how Tom jumps out of planes,” North shared. “And Tom just said, ‘I don’t worry about breaking a nail.’”
NCIS: Origins, Tuesdays, 9/8c, CBS