Can lightning strike twice for Days of Thunder? The news that Tony Scott’s once-ridiculed, now-respected film – starring Tom Cruise as the limply named racing driver Cole Trickle and Nicole Kidman as the brain surgeon who cannot resist his high-octane charisma – is to get a very belated sequel has been cautiously welcomed in most quarters. Audiences will be hoping for as much an advance on the original as Top Gun: Maverick proved in 2022.
There is, however, one high-profile naysayer: Randy Quaid, who played race team owner Tim Daland in the 1990 original. Quaid, who might best be described these days as an actor-turned-conspiracy-junkie, has taken to X for a bizarre rant about the decision to cast Anne Hathaway, rather than Cruise’s ex-wife Kidman, as the co-star and (presumably) love interest in the new film, set for release in 2028.
“We need Nicole back. Don’t be a p—y, Tom Cruise. You need the original girl,” Quaid declares. “It’s not personal; it’s filmmaking.” Then he adds, for good measure: “Anne isn’t sexy”, before following up in a later tweet: “Anne Hathaway is a Leftist, woke, horrible choice for Days of Thunder Nascar audience who are Maga. The sexy older chick for Tom in this film needs to be Nicole. That’s the casting that would sell the idea.”
You may think that Quaid has a point, even if it is expressed in typically blunt and arguably misogynistic terms. Hathaway, while one of Hollywood’s biggest stars – coming off a remarkably successful summer with The Odyssey and The Devil Wears Prada 2 – is more than two decades Cruise’s junior. It is hard not to feel that casting someone closer in age (as Jennifer Connelly was in Maverick) would be less icky. It’s also true that Hathaway espouses the kind of liberal position on everything from immigration to gun control that puts her at odds with the Maga faithful who are surely the film’s target market.
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