Hayley Atwell Apologized to Tom Cruise When Her French Bulldogs Kept Farting on Him: ‘People Were Gagging’

Hayley Atwell brought her French bulldogs to Tom Cruise’s house for a movie night that quickly turned awkward.

When the actress, 43, appeared on The Tonight Show on Thursday, May 22 to promote Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, she told host Jimmy Fallon that she visited Cruise’s home “to watch movies together and build up this kind of rapport, this understanding of film language” when she first joined the franchise ahead of 2023’s Dead Reckoning.

“He said, ‘I hear you have dogs. You should bring them over.’ And I thought, ‘Well that’s quite a good test of character,’ because if a dog likes you, then you’re a pretty solid guy, I think. They don’t lie,” she said. “So I brought them over and they loved him, and they insisted on sitting on him for the duration of the movie.”

According to Atwell, French bulldogs are known for being “very potent farters,” and her pets Wolfie and Iris did not hesitate to fart on Cruise during the watch party.

“So we’re watching [a movie] and they’re sitting on [Cruise] and they were farting on him the whole way through the movie,” she said. “And I’m sat there and I’m like oh my God, and I’m looking around and there’s some other people who are gagging.”

The actress said Cruise was “discreet” about the smelly situation while a group of people watched the movie together.

“He’s enjoying the movie and eating popcorn and at one point I thought, ‘I’ve got to say something, I’m so embarrassed,’ ” Atwell continued. “There was a lull in the film and I just turned to him at one point and I said, ‘Sorry for all the tooting.’ ”

“He was like, ‘Uhh, yeah,’ and went back to the movie, and I was like, ‘That’s more awkward than the farting!’ ” she added with a laugh.

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Atwell, who plays thief Grace who joins Ethan Hunt’s Impossible Missions Force team in the fight against an artificial intelligence known as the Entity in the Mission: Impossible films, also shared the story on SiriusXM’s Ben +1 recently, where she said Cruise was “completely oblivious, so polite, would never comment on anything” during her dogs’ farting.

“He was, like, oblivious, but also looking at me like, ‘What’s the accent about?’ and I was like, it was so weird what came out of my mouth,” she added. “It was more awkward than the dog’s farting.”

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in theaters now.