David Letterman says Tom Cruise was “a little sensitive” for missing the 2023 Oscars after Top Gun: Maverick was snubbed.
Cruise, whose new film received six nominations, was not in attendance at the Los Angeles ceremony. According to Entertainment Tonight, this was because the actor is shooting Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part II on location in the UK.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Letterman said that the supposed production issues were “nonsense,” and that he should have attended to celebrate “his big jet pack Maverick show”.
Kimmel then responded: “Yeah. It seems like he should’ve been there, but he was not there. Maybe he feels like he wasn’t going to win so he didn’t want to come.”
The discussion came after Oscars producers admitted that the show’s host Jimmy Kimmel made a Scientology joke about Tom Cruise because the actor decided not to attend the ceremony.
Kimmel was the host of the 95th iteration of the Oscars on Sunday (March 12). The comic opened his the show with a monologue in which he poked fun at Avatar director James Cameron, last year’s Will Smith slapping incident and a dig at the poor box office performance of Babylon.
Kimmel addressed Maverick‘s box office success in 2022, calling it “the movie that saved the movies”. He followed this by making what appeared to be a Scientology quip directed at Cruise, stating: “Everyone loved Top Gun – everybody. I mean, Tom Cruise with his shirt off in that beach football scene. L. Ron hubba-hubba – you know what I’m saying?”
Cruise is probably the most famous member of the Church of Scientology, which was founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1953. The church has been at the centre of a number of headlines after former members have shared stories of their time in the church.