‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Fans Should Recognize Coyote in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

Grey’s Anatomy fans who pay close attention to detail may have recognized a member of the Top Gun: Maverick cast. Greg Tarzan Davis, who stars as Dr. Jordan Wright on Grey’s, plays Lt. Javy Machado in the Tom Cruise blockbuster. His character’s callsign is “Coyote.”

Davis, 28, is just getting started in Hollywood, but he already can count Cruise as a close friend. After they filmed Top Gun: Maverick, Davis went to work with Cruise again on Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. In a July 13 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Davis called Cruise the “ultimate hype man.”

“It’s a challenge, you know because he’s the type of person that, if you say something is cool or you say that you wanna do something — like I said, ‘Oh man, it’d be cool to learn how to skydive,’ and he’s like, ‘Oh yeah? You think so?’ The next day I get a call saying, ‘Hey, yeah, so I was talking to Tom and Tom said that you wanted to learn how to skydive,’” Davis told ET. “I’m like, ‘Wait, wait! That was just the conversation starter, Tom! I didn’t really mean it.’”

When it came time to work on M: I 7, Davis said he could not believe it was happening. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Davis said his role in the new Ethan Hunt adventure came after he stayed at the Top Gun set late and started talking to co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, who was developing Dead Reckoning with Cruise at the time. McQuarrie told Davis he liked his work on Maverick, which left Davis puzzled at first.

“Now what does that mean? Is it the acting? Is it the bonding experience we had? I don’t know,” Davis told THR. “But he said he enjoyed what I did on the film and that he thought about me as he was writing Mission: Impossible 7. So he wrote a character for me, and I thought that was really cool because I’d never had a direct offer for a film.”

While Cruise and McQuarrie are mentoring Davis on movie sets, Chandra Wilson is making sure Davis is at the top of his game on the Grey’s set. “With [Chandra] being a scene partner, she makes my job so easy,” Davis told PEOPLE of working with Wilson. Wilson plays Dr. Miranda Bailey and is one of the last three remaining original Grey’s stars on the show, alongside Ellen Pompeo and James Pickens Jr.

Wilson “is a person who keeps you on your toes at all times,” Davis said. “She likes to keep it fresh. She likes to keep the scene alive. We can do a take so many times, but she will always find a way to bring something different to it. She’s caught me sleeping a few times and I love it. She keeps me present.”

Davis has always dreamed of acting but didn’t think of seriously pursuing it. The New Orleans native was a first-grade teacher before acting. He would tell his students to follow their dreams, and one time a student asked him what he wanted to be growing up. When he told the student he wanted to be an actor, a lightbulb went off. “It dawned on me,” he told PEOPLE. “I’m not following my dreams.”

Davis can be seen in Maverick, which is now in theaters. He will be back on TV when Grey’s Season 19 debuts on ABC on Oct. 6. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One opens on July 14, 2023.