VIDEO: Top Gun: Maverick sailboat scene

As Scuttlebutt HQ is located in San Diego, CA, this is very much a military town which proved to be a good backdrop for filming the Top Gun movie released in 1986. But the local locations weren’t limited to just the Navy bases for that movie, which is also the case for the sequel Top Gun: Maverick that gets released on May 27, 2022.

However, when they sought out San Diego Bay to film an action scene, nobody told them about the region’s light winds. “We filmed that sequence twice. We filmed it the first time in San Diego, and it was very beautiful,” describes actress Jennifer Connelly. “We got lovely shots, and there were even dolphins swimming alongside us. But Tom (Cruise) said, ‘No, this isn’t fast enough’.”

For the second attempt, somebody did their research and they went to San Francisco where Connelly and Cruise get a real taste of high wind sailing on a J/125.

“It was a very distracting environment,” said Connelly. “It was incredibly windy, with big waves. The boat was at an impossible angle, moving so fast, and we had to play the scene at the same time. I was so paranoid that I was going to forget something with all those distractions. I found myself standing on the coffee table in my living room, practicing with my kids spraying water at me and blowing on me while I ran my lines.”

Connelly shared the story on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and while Cruise is known for doing his own movie stunts, Connelly was pretty stoked to have taken on the role of a sailor. “I love it, it was great, it was amazing,” she said of the experience. “I was taking lessons to prepare for the role, starting in the New York harbor. Kind of like learning how to drive on the Autobahn.”