- "Mission: Impossible" star Rebecca Ferguson balked at the idea that her character is in a relationship.
- She says Ilsa Faust and Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt aren't together because "couples are boring!"
When Swedish star Rebecca Ferguson joined the "Mission: Impossible" franchise with 2015's "Rogue Nation," fans instantly fell for her formidable British spy, Ilsa Faust. And they weren't the only ones: Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt was charmed by her, too.
But when Ferguson and her costar Simon Pegg spoke to Insider ahead of "Dead Reckoning Part One," she explained that Faust and Hunt aren't together because it would be "boring" to separate the cast into couples.
"I've never talked to Tom, we never really analyze the relationship, because I think what is and what you see is what we are working with. I don't think there's been an alternative agenda of creating couples," Ferguson said.
"I think we're professionals. We love each other. We support, we save each other," she continued. "There's such a cog wheel of sort of opportunities in life in general. But we're also quite selfish and we love each other."
The "Dune" star compared Ilsa and Ethan's dynamic to their relationship with other members of the IMF team, like Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg).
"If you didn't put gender on it, you could see it between Benji and Tom as well," she said.
Still, it's worth pointing out that Cruise's hero hasn't smooched any of his other current teammates. Ferguson mentioned a scene that was cut from 2018's "Fallout" in which Ilsa kissed Ethan.
Ferguson said: "We all have these moments, you know. And the snog was just because I like going in for a snog with Tom! They're like, 'We have to cut it out again!'"
Pegg added that a tender moment in "Dead Reckoning" between Ilsa and Ethan could have featured his character instead.
"I think you could easily have had a scene with Benji and Ethan on the on the balcony cuddling," he said.
"I think it would kind of undermine it if it suddenly became like a classic romance. Because that's very conventional and we're, if anything, not conventional," Pegg said.