Thanksgiving week is notoriously a time where insane travel stories are bred, but John Travolta has an especially jaw-dropping one that influenced his latest role. On November 24, 1992, while the Grease actor and self-proclaimed “aviation nerd” was piloting a Gulfstream II from his longtime home in Florida to Maine with his family on board, the jet suffered an electrical failure that nearly caused his vehicle to collide with a Boeing 747. Travolta recalled the experience as he attended a screening for his latest project, The Shepherd.
Ahead of The Shepherd landing on Disney+ next Friday, December 1, John Travolta turned up at the Thanksgiving premiere of the short film in London alongside its writer/director, Iain Softley. During a Q&A, Travolta shared how the film’s storyline, which has a young Royal Air Force pilot dealing with a near-death experience while heading home in a jet for the holidays, compared to his own incident over 30 years ago. In Travolta’s words:
