George and Amal Clooney visited Buckingham Palace for The King’s Trust Awards last month, where they were able to have a chat with King Charles III himself – and according to a source, it stirred up a bit of a rivalry with Tom Cruise.
“Tom’s not even disguising how annoyed he is about this,” a source exclusively tells the Examiner. “He was already quite sensitive to the amount of time that David Beckham’s been getting with [Prince] William and how it’s taking away opportunities from him. But now that George is worming his way in and getting face time with King Charles, it’s sent Tom into a total tizzy.”
Over the years, the Mission: Impossible star, 63, who also lives in the U.K., has “tried too hard to ingratiate himself” with the royal family, the source says. “And here’s George who’s barely lifted a finger to try and get in with them being treated like an aristocrat.”
“It’s left Tom fuming and trash-talking George to all their mutual friends,” adds the source.
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As for Clooney, 64, the source reveals he “isn’t batting an eye” at Cruise’s frustration.
“He doesn’t take anything Tom says or does seriously,” the source explains. “If anything it’s giving him a good laugh to know he’s gotten under Tom’s skin this way.”
This comes more than four years after Clooney gently criticized Cruise’s handling of a situation on set. After an audio clip leaked of Cruise shouting at his crew for allegedly breaking COVID-19 pandemic rules while filming Mission: Impossible 7, the Ocean’s 11 actor suggested he understood Cruise’s need to keep the production running, but said that he wouldn’t have handled the situation the same way if he had been in his position.
“I have a friend who is an [assistant director] on another TV show who just had almost the exact same thing happen with not quite as far out a response,” he said in a 2020 interview with Howard Stern. “[I] wouldn’t have done it that big … I wouldn’t have pulled people out.”
“You’re in a position of power and it’s tricky, right?” he continued. “You do have a responsibility for everybody else, and he’s absolutely right about that, and if the production goes down a lot of people lose their jobs.”
However, he said it’s “just not my style to take everybody to task that way.”