‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’: Henry Cavill and Simon Pegg Reveal Training Required More Than Beer and Pizza

Simon Pegg admits he wasn’t in the best of shape for Mission: Impossible III, so he stepped up his game for Ghost Protocol, the fourth installment of the M:I franchise. It was also the first in which his character Benji was in the field and needed to be in action-packed shape.

“As the films have progressed, I’ve refined and modernized my training regimen,” Pegg told PopCulture.com, jokingly adding that it took more than beer and pizza.

That’s especially true for the latest installment, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, as well as his other cast members.

“A lot of it was going in on your days off to get use to a stunt rig or practice various skill sets or whatever the training may be,” co-star Henry Cavill said. “So by the time you got around to shooting, you weren’t wasting any time or takes on accidents.”

Director Christopher McQuarrie describes Cavill, who plays CIA agent August Walker, as a bit of “a wild card” in this story. Part of that comes from keeping up with Tom Cruise, who’s well-known for performing his own stunts — including a bathroom fight scene with Cavill in M:I – Fallout.

Cruise, who plays Ethan Hunt, always pushes the limit in each installment. In fact, the 56-year old broke his ankle shooting in what he called an “easy” stunt — a scene running jumping from building to building.

That could be quite intimidating, but not for Cavill and Pegg. More like an opportunity to shine.

“It was kind of like a really good opportunity,” Cavill said. “When you have Tom there and he does his own stunts, the door’s open for you to do it yourself.”

“That’s kind of the fun of it,” Pegg added. “That’s what these films are about and I think that’s why it’s so exciting is because the audience knows that’s happening and there’s no trickery.”

McQuarrie says he was always looking for ways to make scenes and stunts more challenging.

“You wake up everyday thinking how can I do more, how can I push this farther,” he said. “And we were confronting the material everyday, reinventing it every day. And a lot of times we would come to work not knowing what we were going to do that day.”

Mission: Impossible – Fallout comes to theaters on Friday, July 27. The sixth installment of the franchise includes Cruise, Cavill, Pegg and Rebecca Ferguson.

Photo Credit: Paramount