Genie Writer Richard Curtis Asked Tom Cruise for Permission Before Including Joke in Movie (Exclusive)

Richard Curtis may not have had Tom Cruise on set the ghost in person, but he was there in spirit.

In the new holiday comedy from Actually love writer Melissa McCarthy’s main character Flora falls in love with the action star, 61, after seeing him in Mission Impossible flick, her first experience in the cinema. Soon she plasters her bedroom wall with posters of Cruise, dreams of a potential life with him and even receives a T-shirt with the actor’s likeness as a Christmas gift from her new friend Bernard (Paapa Essiedu).

“We certainly had to ask him [for permission],” Curtis, 67, tells PEOPLE of casting Cruise in the film. “I mean, we asked him through his people. I’m lucky enough to know Tom a bit. He was always nice to me. And we worked on a film for a while, which didn’t happen.”

Jokes former PEOPLE Magazine’s Curtis, the Sexiest Man Alive’s response: “I don’t know if that’s a favor to me and Melissa or if someone in the mail room said, ‘This sounds good.’ But it means that after all these years I finally made a movie with Tom Cruise.”

“There is a 3 second clip Mission Impossible. I’m so thrilled that that part is here,” he adds.

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Enter Melissa McCarthy the ghost (2023).

Universal Pictures

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IN the ghost, McCarthy’s Flora befriends the hapless Bernard, who invited her. The story switches between moments of unusual humor and more serious, heartfelt messages about love, friendship and the holiday season.

Curtis says McCarthy, 53, came up with some of the jokes in the film herself — like one line when she’s asked if she likes cats, and she replies, “I love them, they’re delicious.”

“If Melissa came up with a new funny joke, then she would do it, and that would be great. But then, of course, you have to do it four more times. You have to make sure you get it right. You have to make sure you’re hitting it at the right speed from right angle,” he explains with a laugh. “So it’s always a mix between a kind of mischief and a very conscientious behavior at the movies.”

“In my films, you want it to be emotionally true and silly at the same time. So [Melissa] he went between being mischievous and just being a real, serious actor,” says Curtis, who is also known for romantic comedy classics like Love Actually, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Paapa Essiedu, Henry Hackford and Alan Cumming inside the ghost (2023).

Universal Pictures

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Directed by Sam Boyd, the ghost it also reunites Curtis with Alan Cumming, who originally played the title character (now played by Essiedu, 33) in Curtis’ 1991 TV movie. Bernard and the ghost.

But Cumming now plays Bernard’s greedy boss — a role originally played by Rowan Atkinson in Bernard and the ghoston which the new film is based.

Curtis tells PEOPLE that he has remained friends with the “sweet and interesting” Cumming over the years, whom he asked to join the cast the ghost “as a favor.”

“We just thought if Bernard is the cutest guy in the world, we got in touch with him and said, ‘Would you like to play the most dangerous guy in the world right now?’ [whether he would]” says the director. “And he’s played a few scoundrels in his time.”

“It was good to see Alan again. He’s aged well, I think,” jokes Curtis.

the ghost now streaming on Peacock.

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Source: HIS Education