Hoda Kotb isn’t quite sure how she landed her picture with Tom Cruise… but she’s definitely not mad about it.
“It was so crazy,” Kotb told Entertainment Tonight of her picture with Cruise taken at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. “We were all together and 10 seconds later, I didn’t know what happened. I blacked out and then I had a picture.”
On Instagram, where the Today host initially posted the photo, Kotb wrote that a photo with the Mission: Impossible star had always been a dream of hers.
“Do you know when you dream of meeting Tom Cruise… And then it finally happens,” she captioned the photo, which saw her and Cruise soaking wet in the rain during the opening ceremony on July 26.
Kotb’s Today co-host, Savannah Guthrie was also present for the interview, and added more details about her friend’s moment of starstruck.
“The poncho-soaking-wet-Tom-Cruise shot was the shot of the Olympics,” Guthrie said, and added that Kotb worked hard to finagle the photo op. “If there was a gold medal for getting the sho… We were like, ‘Where’d Hoda go?’ and then she came back and was like, ‘I got the shot.’”
Cruise finished the Paris 2024 games as a star, when he facilitated the transfer of the Olympic flag between France and Los Angeles during the L.A. 2028 handover ceremony. After jumping into the Paris stadium on live television, he rode out of the event center on a motorcycle and then skydived into the Hollywood sign.
The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Ben Winston, the segment’s creative director and executive producer this week, who said Cruise shut down the suggestion that a stunt performer execute the jumps.
I don’t think there’s anybody like him in the world,” Winston said. “There is no better collaborator.”
