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For over thirty years, Hollywood has been waiting for a sequel that just never showed up. Back in 1994, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise starred together in ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ playing the eternally bound bloodsuckers Louis and Lestat. It’s still the only movie the two men have ever made together. And the reason why isn’t really one big feud. It’s more like a slow pile-up of bad timing, rivalry, and two guys who just don’t mesh.
Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise’s Rocky ‘Interview with the Vampire’ Set
The trouble reportedly started almost right away. Pitt has talked openly over the years about how miserable he was during the ‘Interview with the Vampire‘ shoot. He’s described the mood on set as bleak, and later brushed off his own role as one he came to resent. Working next to Cruise didn’t make things easier. In one interview that gets quoted a lot. Pitt admitted Cruise just got under his skin, saying flatly, “He bugged me.” He went on to describe the two of them as total opposites, with Cruise being the eager, friendly type and Pitt being more guarded. He also mentioned an unspoken competitiveness between them, one that left no room for anything close to a real friendship.
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That tension, from what people say, never really went away.
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The closest the two ever got to teaming up again came about ten years later, when both actors were set to star in a racing drama that eventually became 2019’s ‘Ford v Ferrari,’ directed by Joseph Kosinski. This time, it wasn’t bad blood that killed it. It was a different kind of ego problem. Both men wanted the same role, the driver, not the team owner.
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Pitt has said that he and Cruise each wanted to be behind the wheel, and once it was clear the producer part wouldn’t get much screen time on the track, the whole thing fell apart. The movie eventually got made with Matt Damon and Christian Bale instead, and it went on to pick up four Oscar nominations.
Brad Pitt’s ‘F1’ Movie and the Quiet Rivalry With Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Team
More recently, the rivalry has taken a quieter, more territorial turn. When Pitt signed on for the racing film ‘F1,’ he brought along the same creative team that worked on Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ including Kosinski again and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. People close to the situation have suggested Cruise, who’s protective of both his box office standing and his image in the racing world, wasn’t exactly thrilled to see Pitt using the same playbook with the same collaborators, especially with talk that ‘F1‘ could pull in similarly huge numbers.
Still, neither man has ever treated this like some permanent grudge. Pitt has kept things lighthearted in public. At one point, he brought up the go-kart races the two used to run back during their “Vampire” days and joked about who came out on top. He admitted Cruise “had my number,” and said he’d still be open to working together again, as long as he doesn’t have to hang off a biplane or swim through a submarine, a clear jab at Cruise’s brutal stunt work.
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What all this really points to is something more ordinary than a Hollywood blood feud. Two hugely successful men who rose to fame around the same time and could never quite shake the feeling that they were chasing the same spotlight. A rough first project turned into distance. A near-miss deal made it worse. And years of being compared to each other did the rest.
Even so, both actors have hinted at different points that a second team-up isn’t completely off the table. It just means the timing, the project, and maybe even the egos would all have to line up in a way they never quite have. For now, ‘Interview with the Vampire‘ stays a one-off, a single, slightly awkward pairing of two of Hollywood’s biggest stars that’s never been repeated.
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