Tom Cruise Parachutes Into Softball City

For two seconds, it was looking dire for Tom Cruise. He garbled his way through a GQ cover story, talking himself in circles when forced to answer tough questions like “What’s it like to turn 64?” and “Why did it take you so long to sit down for a profile?” None of that seems to be helping the early numbers for his new movie, Digger, which is not a musical but is something else audacious and weird. But if there’s one thing Cruise is really good at, it’s getting himself out of a sticky situation. He’ll throw himself out a window. He’ll fly a helicopter. He’ll jump off a cliff if it winds up getting him somewhere safer than he was before, which is why I’m sure he’s happy to have touched down in Softball City last night with back-to-back interviews on The Tonight Show and New Heights.

If there are three guys who are not going to stress you out, it’s Jimmy Fallon and the brothers Kelce, all of whom have made their careers on being guys who are just happy to be in any room they’re in. So happy, in fact, no one seems to mind that Cruise gives functionally both The Tonight Show and New Heights the exact same interview, hitting all the same points. If you were to, say, take a shot every time Cruise describes the work he does as “jazz” between both interviews, you’d be going to the hospital. (This is beside the point, but the so-called “jazz” of it all implies that he’s not doing something, say, scripted and choreographed but more spontaneous and unpredictable.) In both interviews, the topics of approved conversation include sitting next to Taylor Swift at the Chiefs-Broncos game (to Fallon: “She knows. She knows. She’s just bringing it.” To the Kelces: “She was schooling me.”), Digger’s crazy one-take, ten-minute monologue (to Fallon: “Let’s play. Let’s jump.” To the Kelces: “It took every bit of skill), and Digger’s catchphrase (?), “Bang, bang, bang” (to Fallon: “Bang, bang, bang!” To the Kelces: “Bang, bang, bang!”). Cruise also can’t stop bringing up his Tropic Thunder character Les Grossman, who does seem to bare some similarities to Digger in that both are prosthetics-laden olden men with bombastic personalities. You would think that Cruise is more proud of his work as Les Grossman than he is his work on Collateral, and you’d be right as he quickly dismisses the latter movie on New Heights when discussing how it was shot digitally.

In both interviews, Cruise seems much more at ease than in his GQ sit-down, eager to soak up the preapproved questions and topics of conversation along with the praise. He’s not really doing anything all that different from how traditional celebrities promote a movie — charming anecdotes, calling the director a genius, showing a clip from the film — but without a big stunt or daring feat to brag about, Cruise still feels somewhat out of his depth. He’s ostensibly in his element but unable to connect the work he’s done on Digger — an auteur-driven movie with an actual statement at its heart — with his platitude-minded PR game. That the whole last minute of his appearance on The Tonight Show is dedicated to him going out into the audience to offer people popcorn out of the Digger novelty popcorn boot feels like a last-ditch effort to muster up some excitement in the room for a movie people still don’t have a handle on and a star whose energy baffles. But is anyone seeing a Tom Cruise movie because he loves popcorn? (Or, as he tells the Kelces, “I’m a popcorn guy. A meat and potatoes and popcorn guy.”) On New Heights, at least, Cruise is able to put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and turn the interview outward, asking them about football and strategy and their families, delicately tossing every softball they chuck at him right back over the fence.

There are still two weeks until Digger is out in theaters, which begs the question of where else Cruise might be safe from any puzzling inquiries about his life or any specifics about his filmography outside of how fun it was to dance in his underwear in Risky Business. Chicken Shop Date is probably too scary. So is Track Star. It’d be great to see him on Therapuss, frankly, but Jake Shane might be too nervy. If this is as candid and engaged as he gets when being interviewed, then maybe Cruise ought to stick to what he’s come to know best: stunts, feats, and avoiding the limelight.