Ever notice Top Gun: Maverick is chock full of nepo babies? Maverick’s dad was a pilot, Rooster’s dad (spoiler) was a pilot, and even Penny’s dad was an admiral. And there was going to be another one before Glen Powell stepped in. The actor was offered the role of Hangman (after missing out on Rooster to Miles Teller), and he almost didn’t take it because the character, at that point, wasn’t good enough, per British GQ. In the original script, Hangman was called Slayer (lame) and he was both a nepo baby and a bad pilot.
“I said, ‘If I were editing this movie, I would cut him out immediately,’†Powell told GQ. Luckily for Powell, Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski were amenable to his red pen, making him simply a cocky jerkwad — not an untalented nepo-baby cocky jerkwad. “What we were talking about is, how can Hangman service the story and give the flavor of the original Top Gun that you need?†Powell continued. If he had really wanted to give the original Top Gun flavor, he would have advocated for more homoerotic locker-room scenes.