After acting alongside him in the Mission: Impossible films, Rebecca Ferguson asked Tom Cruise for a helicopter when she was struck down with a stomach bug in the Maldives.
Ferguson, who stars in the new thriller Mercy, out today (January 23), told The Independent in a new interview that she called him on her husband’s suggestion after coming down with an illness she thought was a “worm”.
“I called him once when I was in the Maldives when I had a really bad stomach,” she said. “I was like, ‘Can I get a helicopter?’ It was quite a funny thing.”
She was trying to think who could help her fly out of the island she was on, after coming down with what she later found out was gastroenteritis, and her husband, Rory St. Clair Gainer said, “Tom can get a helicopter”.
Ferguson has portrayed MI6 agent Ilsa Faust in three of the Mission: Impossible movies: 2015’s Rogue Nation, 2018’s Fallout and 2023’s Dead Reckoning. Cruise, meanwhile, is a co-producer of the franchise and has played Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt in all eight movies.
NME gave 2025’s The Final Reckoning, thought to be the final movie in the series, four stars. “It sounds thrilling but long-time fans expecting the usual high octane opening of pulse-racing set pieces in swish locations are going to be disappointed,” the review reads, but finishes: “There’s ultimately lots to love about Final Reckoning and if this is the end, Cruise and Co are finishing on a high. It’s just a shame it takes so long to get going.”
Cruise’s next movie, the black comedy Digger, is scheduled for release on October 2. Ferguson, along with her turn in Mercy, is set to star in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, The Magic Faraway Tree and Dune: Part Three this year.
She’s also had a leading role in the Apple TV+ series Silo since it first aired in 2023. Apple hasn’t yet announced when the upcoming season three will air, but filming wrapped in May last year.
In a four-star review of season two, NME wrote: “Silo season two doesn’t attempt anything too outlandish, fully aware that its enigma is what keeps us coming back. The mix of paranoia and politics makes for intriguing seasoning over a sci-fi show that plays into our fears of the post-apocalyptic wilderness. And with Ferguson again in resolute form, building on her stellar work in the first season, Silo is a tantalising prospect, simply begging you to wrestle with its mysteries. It’s more than worth it.”