‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Stars Danny Ramirez and Greg Tarzan Davis Praise Tom Cruise for Cultivating ‘Exceptional Culture’ on Set (Exclusive)

Top Gun: Maverick is currently the biggest movie in the world and is quickly becoming one of the biggest movies of all time. If you ask stars Danny Ramirez and Greg Tarzan Davis — who play LT Mickey “Fanboy” Garcia and LT Javy “Coyote” Machado, respectively — a lot of the credit for why the film is such a success is due to the transparency and “exceptional culture” that Tom Cruise (CAPT Pete “Maverick” Mitchell) cultivated while filming. Speaking to PopCulture.com in support of the film’s digital release, Ramirez and Davis spoke highly and candidly of the example that Cruise set for the rest of the cast.

“There was personal pressure to perform and also the cost of it,” Rameriz said, then going on to share how Cruise put the rest of the cast at ease during filming. “The most beautiful thing was the first time that Tom actually went up and he shared the footage because everything was so transparent. He was like, ‘Oh OK, well I messed that up. That doesn’t work. That doesn’t work.’” The actor explained, “He wanted to show us his mistakes every single time in order to take away the negative pressure to do something, but rather being like, ‘There’s going to be errors in this. It’s not a perfect process.’”

Ramirez went on to say, “So everyone was also open about their errors in regards to there’s one time that my mask was inside or out. Then it’s knowing that because the next time it’s like, ‘OK because we’ve now understood that that happens,’ so it was always a foundation to build on.” He then added, “I’ve kept saying this because the more football season comes around, the more I think about establishing a culture within an organization and Tom really set an exceptional culture. I think we’re all so tight friends still because I think the way that experience happened was organic, but also set in such a positive growth mindset is a place that is… Yeah. It’s beautiful. I love it. I loved the entire experience.”

Part of that bond the crew built from working on Top Gun: Maverick comes from the various physical issues they collectively dealt with from doing a high-flying air force film. Previously, Miles Teller revealed that doctors found jet fuel in his blood after he was done working on the movie, which Davis says “was unique to him, but we all had our own… I won’t say problems, but we all had our own things that we dealt with” such as “people puking.” 

Sharing his own experience, Davis explained, “When I finished my scene that I shot, which I had to do about 15 times this particular maneuver, I was going through it. I was shivering it and my blood was displaced and I had to go lay down after we had briefings… debriefings after every session. I couldn’t even sit in a briefing because I was just out it.” Ramirez then chimed in, quipping, “Well, my theory on that moment, Coyote, was because you had to act it, but by acting it, you also did the thing that is happening, which is you cut oxygen to you by not breathing because you pretended to not breathe while going under G, which creates the exact same shit storm. That was on you, dude.”

Davis joked, “Well, anything to get the shot,” then added, “You have to understand when you’re up there and you only have an hour and a half, two hours to get the shot. You don’t have monitors. You don’t have anybody telling you, ‘Hey, great. Moving on,’ you’re like, ‘OK, I have to continue doing it over and over.’ And all of us, we were like, ‘Yo, we’re sick, throwing up,’ but we’re like, ‘Hey, we got to make sure we get this’ because we’re spending so much money just to start the engine up on these F-18s.”

He continued, “Then the flight time is ridiculous and you don’t want to be the person after spending an hour and a half up there and you can’t use any of the footage and there’s a room full of actors, filmmakers, navy, military people. They’re all watching what you did. You’re like, ‘Let me just give them as much as I can.’” Top Gun: Maverick is in theaters now and available to rent or own from digital retailers.