‘Mission Impossible’ Costar Pom Klementieff Talks About The Most Difficult Tom Cruise Stunt

Pom Klementieff couldn’t stomach Tom Cruise while filming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. 

“I kept telling him to just kick me here,” the actress said in an interview with EW, pointing to her midsection. “I was squeezing abs. ‘You can just go for it. He was like ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ I was like, ‘But it’s going to help me!’ But he wouldn’t do it.”

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Klementieff plays Paris in the new Mission Impossible, partnered with the main villain, Gabriel, played by Esai Morales. The request for the stomach kick came during her fight with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt character.

The actress, who also played Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, says her character is someone who “destroys everything in her path. She’s a rebel, she’s a killer, she’s extremely skilled and quite lonely too.”

Klementieff said her film name is an homage to Leonard Nimoy, who played the Great Paris on the original Mission: Impossible TV show. “When Christopher McQuarrie cast me for the role, he didn’t know which name the character would have,” she says. “It was cool to name me Paris, me being from France, and then they decided that I would speak French because I speak French in real life.”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will hit theaters July 12.

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