Top Gun: Maverick star Miles Teller is not being figurative when he says he has jet fuel in his blood.
The actor revealed an odd allergic reaction he had after a fighter jet flight in the movie during a recent interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
“We landed, and I thought, ‘Man, I’m not feeling too good,’” Teller told the host. “I was really hot and I just started itching like crazy. So I got out of the jet. I’m just covered in hives. Head to toe... I’m in an oatmeal bath that night. I have sensitive skin anyway, truth be told, Irish-Scottish skin. No dyes, no nothing.”
The actor went straight to the doctor for a blood test, which revealed that he had “flame-retardant, pesticide and jet fuel” in his bloodstream.
Naturally, the actor informed the film’s lead, Tom Cruise, about the results the next day, and the star had an extremely Top Gun response.
“Tom’s like, ‘How did it go, Miles? What did they find?’” Teller said. “I was like, ‘Well, Tom, it turns out I have jet fuel in my blood.’ And without even skipping a beat, Tom goes, ‘Yeah, I was born with it, kid.’”
Teller plays Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, son of the late Nick “Goose” Bradshaw in the film alongside Cruise’s eponymous Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
Cruise put the cast of the Top Gun sequel through a “gruelling” flight training programme while preparing to shoot the film. “Aside from training them to be pilots, they needed to check the boxes to be able to fly in the navy aircraft and go and do the same training that those naval aviators do,” Kevin La Rosa Jr, Maverick’s aerial coordinator who helped Cruise put together the training programme, said in an interview with The Independent.
The Independent’s critic Clarisse Loughrey gave Top Gun: Maverick four out of five stars in her review.