The “Mission: Impossible” star closed Sunday’s ceremony in true Hollywood fashion by leaping into the Stade de France and hopping on a motorcycle, before a pre-taped clip showed him skydiving toward the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and the 2028 Olympics.
While the feat seemed most inspired by the stunt-laden “Impossible” franchise, former “Late Late Show” producer Ben Winston told The Hollywood Reporter that this symbolic passing of the baton was instead influenced by a 15-year-old bit — from Conan O’Brien. “I liked the idea of doing the bulk of it in Los Angeles but with an amazing open in Paris,” Winston said Monday. “This is such a weird reference, but remember when Conan O’Brien started on ‘The Tonight Show’ and moved from New York to Los Angeles?”
“He did a really fun sketch going cross country,” he continued about O’Brien’s hilarious 2009 opener. “That has always stuck with me. So I was like, ‘How do Tom Cruise and all these incredible athletes take that flag from Paris to L.A.?’ It’s a weird inspiration.”
Winston recalled learning that “there’s this tradition of a 12-minute show” to symbolize the Olympics’ journey from one host nation to another and immediately thinking: “Well, it would be the coolest thing if we snatched the flag, and we could get Tom Cruise to do it.”
While he originally planned to have a masked stuntman pull off the more dangerous moments, Winston said filming the closer — which had onlookers in the Hollywood hills believe they were filming the next “Impossible” movie — went even better than expected.
