George Clooney Just Reacted to Tom Cruise’s Rant at His ‘Mission: Impossible’ Crew for Breaking COVID-19 Restrictions

From one Hollywood hotshot to another. George Clooney reacted to Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 7 rant just hours after an alleged audio leak was published by The Sun on Tuesday, December 15. The paper claimed that the audio recording is of Cruise, who can reportedly be heard screaming at his film crew for disobeying COVID-19 safety protocols. Fellow film star Clooney says he can “understand” Cruise’s reaction.

“He didn’t overreact because it is a problem,” Clooney said during an interview on SiriusXM’s Howard Stern Show on December 16, according to E!. “I have a friend who’s an AD on another TV show who just had the almost exact same thing happen with not quite as far out a response.” As for what Clooney meant by “as far out a response,” let’s just say that Cruise wasn’t exactly cool as a cucumber when it came to reprimanding his crew members, who are currently on set filming Mission: Impossible 7 in the London area, as per Variety.

In the audio, Cruise allegedly threatens to fire two crew members after catching them standing within six feet of one another at a computer monitor, according to The Sun. “They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us. Because they believe in us and what we’re doing,” Cruise can be heard shouting. “I’m on the phone with every f**king studio at night, insurance companies, producers and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherf**kers. I don’t ever want to see it again. Ever!” He goes on to tell them that if he sees them “do it again, you’re f**king gone.”

“No apologies. You can tell it to the people who are losing their f**king homes because our industry is shut down,” he continued. “It’s not going to put food on their table or pay for their college education. That’s what I sleep with every night—the future of this f**king industry! So I’m sorry, I’m beyond your apologies.”

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Clooney, for his part, “wouldn’t have done it that big,” he told Howard Stern. “You’re in a position of power and it’s tricky, right? You do have a responsibility for everybody else and he’s absolutely right about that,” he explained. “And, you know, if the production goes down, a lot of people lose their jobs. People have to understand that and have to be responsible. It’s just not my style to, you know, to take everybody to task that way.”

The Catch-22 actor noted that the people on the M:I7 team might have better insight into what really led Cruise to react so harshly. “I think it doesn’t help necessarily to point to specific people in that way and do it that…but, you know, everybody has their own style. The people who were on that shoot will tell us more about it,” he said. “I understand why he did it. He’s not wrong at all about that. You know, I just, I don’t know that I would have done it quite that personally, but I don’t know all the circumstances so maybe he had it 10 or 15 times before.”