Miles Teller opens up on what it’s like to go toe-to-toe with Tom Cruise on Top Gun: Maverick

gamesradar.com:

Playing Goose’s son Rooster 35 years after the original film meant a lot of things for Miles Teller to perfect - brushing up his piano skills, getting Anthony Edwards’ mustache down, and going toe-to-toe with Hollywood icon Tom Cruise. There’s a lot unsaid between Maverick and Rooster in the sequel to the 1986 film, Top Gun: Maverick, which finally lands in theaters this week. Not only are they both still dealing with the grief of losing a dad and a wingman – but there’s been a lot of animosity festering since we saw them last.

We glimpse this in the trailer as Rooster tells Mav, "My dad believed in you, I’m not going to make the same mistake" – and it permeates through the movie with brutal stand-offs between the characters. So what’s it like sharing these moments with Cruise? "It’s great," Teller tells Total Film at the recent junket. "It's Tom Cruise, man. So he's just so good at what he does. And in the scenes where kind of the stakes were a little higher and the emotions were running high and he's a great partner to have. I just think he's just really top-notch."

For Mav, seeing Rooster again brings out ghosts of the past that he's buried. And from the first moment he sees the young pilot in the bar, you can tell it’s the ghost of Goose he’s seeing. The mustache, the hair, the piano playing – it’s all uncanny, and very painful for our protagonist. Speaking about bringing the essence of that character into this sequel, Teller explained he wanted to get the "vibe" of the iconic character right.

"Well, for me, I think when I would think about Goose, it was more of like, a certain feeling, you know, Goose's he's a vibe," he shares. "In the original, you know, he and Tom are peers, Goose is his wingman and in this one