The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris featured plenty of highlights. Simone Biles and the USA gymnastics team taking home the gold, Stephen Nedoroscik pommel horse domination and more were among the big moments. And it all wrapped up with an unbelievable Closing Ceremony, which ended with Tom Cruise leaping into the Stade de France to grab the Olympics flag and bring it to Los Angeles via motorcycle. As impressive as that was, a non-Cruise-related idea that was initially pitched, and it sounds even wilder.
Casey Wasserman, who is a chairperson and president for LA28, was one of the key people in charge of organizing this moment at the Olympics closing ceremony. He recently spoke at this year’s CNBC x Boardroom: Game Plan panel in Santa Monica, CA, where he reflected on the stunt. The mogul explained when it came to planning the epic flag hand-off moment, the team had to hire a great television producer with experience working in live broadcasts. Wasserman went with Ben Winston, and he explained (via THR) that decision:
The backstory is that we realized we were producing a 15-minute live TV show, and so I hired who I think is the best person in the world to do that.
Ben Winston is arguably best known for producing The Late Late Show with James Cordon and The Grammy Awards. According to Casey Wasserman, Winston came in with two major ideas when he was hired. One featured the M:I icon, and the LA28 committee ultimately spent over a year producing that. The other was quite strange, as it involved finding a way to make the Olympic rings appear out of the ocean. Wasserman described it as:
…like a David Blaine kind of thing.
It’s hard to imagine what that would look like, or what other logistics would be involved in making the rings wash to shore in Los Angeles. It sounds absolutely bizarre, but may have also been a lot of fun if done right. I mean, just imagine the notion of the iconic symbols of the games just appearing almost out of thin air. Nevertheless, I think the powers that be went with the right idea.
Casey Wasserman explained during that same conversation that once his team got on a Zoom call with Tom Cruise, the actor quickly came on board, and it was officially full steam ahead. However, Cruise insisted on doing his own stunts for the broadcast and (worked without pay), which makes the whole event even more epic. You can revisit the iconic moment via the YouTube video below:
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I wonder if any celebrity personnel would’ve been involved with the other idea, or if the committee would’ve tapped David Blaine himself to make the rings appear. Regardless, it’s hard to argue with the notion of having Tom Cruise — a quintessential American movie star — take the the Olympics Flag to Hollywood, which is the center of moviemaking. The stunt also acts as a showcase of American athleticism, something that will certainly be on display in the 2028 Olympic Games.
If that broadcast is as epic as this Closing Ceremony was, we have a lot of excitement ahead of us in four years. On that note, one has to wonder if the discarded David Blaine-like concept may be repurposed in some way for those games. Time will tell, I suppose, but I’d surely be excited to see that wild-sounding idea come to fruition.
You can revisit some of this year’s best moments at the 2024 Paris Olympics by streaming them now with a Peacock subscription. Tom Cruise fans can also see the movie star perform more death-defying stunts in his latest film, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which is available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription.