Forty years later, the cast of Top Gun remains one of the most iconic ensembles of the 1980s — a veritable who’s who of major stars for the next few decades.
When it came to discovering the perfect actors to jump in the cockpit, Paramount struggled to find that loving feeling. In an exclusive interview with Gold Derby, casting director Margery Simkin, who most recently cast last year’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, remembers several protracted battles over who should portray the likes of Goose, Iceman, and Viper.
Top Gun was early in Simkin’s career. She had previously cast Beverly Hills Cop, establishing a professional relationship with producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. She also had a working rapport with director Tony Scott, with whom she’d just worked on a project that never got made. By the time Simkin came on board Top Gun, the script, which went through several major rewrites, was largely complete and Simkin was tasked with assembling a flight crew.
THE NEED FOR… DEEP POCKETS
Top Gun would not be the phenomenon it is without its leading man — Tom Cruise. Nor would Tom Cruise be the star he is without Top Gun.
In 1985, Cruise had just come off the wildly successful Risky Business, after playing memorable supporting roles in Taps and The Outsiders. He had yet to prove he had the kind of star power to open a film, but he was well on his way there.
Despite his relative inexperience, much like Maverick himself, Cruise came with an enormous amount of confidence and chutzpah via his agent, Paula Wagner. While stories abound of the many Hollywood stars who read for Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, including reports that Matthew Modine was a strong contender for the role, Simkin says that to her mind, there was no one else seriously in contention for Maverick.
“I’d been doing a lot of projects with guys that age,” Simkin remembers. “So, they’d sent me the script, and [producer] Don [Simpson] called me up and said, ‘Paula Wagner wants a million dollars for Tom. Who else is there?’”
Simkin attempted to find a cheaper alternative for Simpson, paging through her notebooks of up-and-coming young men she’d seen in various auditions over the last few years. Cruise had also previously read for Simkin, fresh off an early dark turn in Taps. “I had seen a tougher version of him, so I knew he had that, and I had met him, so I knew he was charming,” she explains.
To her, tough but charming was the perfection combination for Maverick. “There were great actors out there. But when you thought of this part, Tom seemed the best of any of those guys of that time,” she says. “So, I called Don back and I said, ‘Pay him.’”
TALK TO ME, GOOSE
Everyone needs a wingman — and for Maverick, it’s Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, a character who needs to never outshine Maverick, but leave a lasting mark on the audience all the same. “Every role has a purpose in a screenplay and the role of that character was that you cared about him enough that when he died, you were heartbroken,” reflects Simkin.
Don Simpson initially had other ideas in mind, wanting an actor who could be a funny sidekick to Maverick, someone like Paul Reiser, whom Simkin had auditioned previously for Beverly Hills Cop. “He really wanted a comic,” she recalls. “He said, ‘I want somebody funny’” And I said, ‘The purpose of this part is you care when he dies, and you will really care when Tony dies.’”
Anthony Edwards had taken on small roles in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Revenge of the Nerds, but had yet to truly break through. Simkin had seen him over and over in the audition room, but Top Gun was the one she knew he was right for. “He’s so sympathetic,” she explains. “There’s a kindness to his face. I just thought people will love him and be upset when he dies.”
Simkin stood her ground and it paid off. “The two biggest fights on Top Gun casting-wise were Anthony Edwards and Val Kilmer,” she notes. “I’m proud of that because when you look at it, that’s where they jumped off for the new movie.”
YOU’RE DANGEROUS
A successful fighter pilot doesn’t only need a wingman, but also a nemesis — someone who sticks in his craw and drives him to be better. For Maverick, that’s Tom “Iceman” Kazanzky, his rival and eventual friend.
From the time she signed on to Top Gun, Simkin wanted to cast Val Kilmer as the stoic Iceman. She knew Kilmer from his Juilliard days and had seen him in a play about the Baeder Meinhoff gang at New York’s Public Theatre. She was barely even aware of Kilmer’s only two film roles prior, comedic turns in Top Secret and Real Genius.
“I knew him as this serious, intense theater actor,” she says. “Unbeknownst to me, he had been in a comedy for Paramount and then did another comedy for another studio. So, the studio said to me, ‘It can’t be him. He’s a comic actor. He’s not a dramatic actor, and you can’t cast him.’ I was so confused.”
In those days, it was harder to convince studio execs and producers that someone was right for a role because they weren’t often putting actors and their auditions on tape. Either you saw them read live or you knew them from previous work. Kilmer had come in to meet director Tony Scott, who helped Simkin fight for Kilmer to get the role. But it took a lot of convincing. “They just were completely bewildered because they had seen him in two comedies,” she says of higher-ups. “But Tony really, really wanted it. And I kept saying to everybody, ‘He was in The Baeder Meinhoff Gang.’”
Simkin’s “discovery” of Kilmer as a dramatic actor was pure happenstance. She’d heard from multiple friends that the play was good and made a point of seeing it. “It’s these weird, unlikely circumstances,” she says of the amount of luck involved in assembling a perfect cast.
TAKE MY BREATH AWAY
Simkin didn’t have as much of a direct role in casting Cruise’s love interest for the film, Top Gun instructor Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood. Kelly McGillis had recently garnered attention for her work in Witness, but she was a studio choice who director Tony Scott signed off on.
“The studio wanted her to have that part,” Simkin says. “She was supposed to do something else for them and then that didn’t happen.”
Simkin, however, does remember an attempt to foist a different actress, whom she leaves unnamed, on her. Someone she deemed far too young and inexperienced for the character. But that was because of a major script change. Initially, Maverick’s love interest was written to be a gymnast or aerobics instructor before the real-life civilian instructor Christine Fox inspired Simpson and Bruckheimer to integrate Charlie into the world of Miramar.
“Somebody kept pushing this actress who was much younger, saying, ‘She’s perfect,’” Simkin remembers. “And I’m going, ‘She’s totally wrong and she’s too young.’ And he’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ It was days and weeks of this. Finally, there was a moment where he said, ‘Why can’t she be a gymnast?’ And I said, ‘A what?’”
“What used to happen is all of these script drafts would end up in the agency libraries and sometimes they pulled out the wrong draft,” she explains of the mix-up. “Actors would show up with the wrong drafts or with scenes that had been changed. It’s such a different world now.”
Simkin did, however, see another actress for the role of Charlie who she also felt was wrong for the part, but ended up casting in the movie anyway — Meg Ryan. Ryan plays Goose’s wife, Carole Bradshaw, a small but crucial role in building the emotional impetus for Maverick’s character arc.
Ryan had largely worked on television at this point, appearing on soap opera As the World Turns. “Meg had a fantastic agent who I adored and trusted, and she had had me meet Meg years before,” Simkin remembers. “I’d seen some TV movie or something that she’d done and honestly, I wasn’t that impressed. But her agent just kept pushing me and said, ‘Trust me, she’s changed, she’s grown.’ So, she came in for the Kelly McGillis part.”
At that time, Ryan’s character didn’t exist in the script. Carole was added later to emphasize Goose’s loss. “She was a little kooky and charming and adorable and not at all right for that part, but did a nice reading,” Simkin says. “Then, when they wrote this part, I thought of her immediately.”
Simkin also thought of Holly Hunter for the role of Carole, but she was acting in a play in New York at the time and unable to come to Los Angeles for an in-person audition. Though Simkin videotaped Hunter, the production team’s ability to meet Ryan sealed the deal for her casting.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Top Gun features a packed ensemble cast, including a large number of pilots and instructors at the Naval Academy. Most notably, there’s Mike “Viper” Metcalf, a commanding officer and Vietnam vet who served with Maverick’s father.
Metcalf is strict and determined to chip away at Maverick’s arrogance, but he’s also a fair teacher who can clearly see Maverick’s potential. For Simkin, Tom Skerritt, who had captured attention with major roles in films such as M*A*S*H, The Turning Point, and Alien (directed by Ridley Scott, Tony’s brother), was an obvious choice.
“He’s a fantastic actor,” she says. “[But the studio] thought he was too low key and that he wasn’t going to be loud enough. I said, ‘He commands silently. You don’t have to bark to be in charge.’”
Simkin also thought Skerritt would be an ideal contrast to some of the other actors like Michael Ironside, who did possess more of that traditional military drill sergeant ethos. “Those other parts were more shout-y,” she notes. “The idea of having a still and steady in-charge guy seemed ideal. You’re painting a picture and you want to have different colors.”
Someone Simkin didn’t anticipate casting was Tim Robbins, who landed a small part as another pilot-in-training, Sam “Merlin” Wells, a role that likely wouldn’t stick with audiences if Robbins hadn’t gone on to the massively successful career that followed.
Simkin agreed to see him for the movie at the behest of Robbins’ extremely pushy agent. “He was a nudge,” she says. “He called me every day. I loved him to pieces, but he was a pain in the neck, and he just wouldn’t quit. So, Tim, came in and auditioned. I would not have normally seen him, but he was really good.”
But there was still one major problem — Robbins is 6-foot-5 and fighter pilots tend to be short to fit in their planes. “He did a really good reading, and I remember calling somebody and saying, ‘How big can someone be to get into the cockpit?’ Those are the things we have to think about all the time.”
Despite many tough conversations with studio brass and fights to cast several of the leading roles, Simkin only has fond memories for Top Gun and its enduring 40 years of popularity. “It was very memorable,” she concludes. “But you don’t think about any of that [success] when you’re doing it. You’re just doing your best on that job and then luck happens or it doesn’t.”
