Top Gun’s Miles Teller Compares Navy Training for the Movie to Being Waterboarded: ‘I Was Like, Dude, I’m an Actor!’

Top Gun: Maverick’s Miles Teller says he was “pretty ignorant” when it came to the actual amount of training needed to play the role of Lt. Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw in the film.

Speaking with actor and comedian Adam Ray on his podcast About Last Night, Teller said everyone felt the effects of the intense flight training.

“I didn’t throw up — there was like six kinds of new pilots and half of them were puking even up until the last day,” he recalled. “Even for me, man … First 30 minutes are cool. You’re ripping around. Then you would start getting like a slight nausea feeling. Then you’re just kind of, you know, you feel like you’re about to puke and you have to just keep going.”

“Hold it back,” Ray added.

“So how many times total were you in the plane?” asked co-host and NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez.

“In the F-18, you know, 20 something hours, the most hours of any civilian — me and all the guys that were in the film,” Teller responded. “The one guy, Glen Powell, who’s in the movie, he’s getting his pilots license, I think on Wednesday. So after we finished production he only needed about a handful of more flights to be able to take the test and get his pilot’s license.”

When it came to the training needed to participate in the film, Teller said his program in particular was very unique.

“When they give you kind of the outline of like the prep and all the training that’s required for the movie, does that like scare you or excite you?” Ray asked.

Teller admitted he was “pretty ignorant” regarding the amount of training required to be in the box office hit.

“I didn’t think it was going to be what it was, uh, a lot of components going on,” he added. “There’s some specific things for my character that I had to train on that was, that was unique.”

The actor then revealed that some stars of the film “had to get certified through the Navy just to be able to fly in these jets over water.”

“In case we ever had to eject over water,” he clarified. “We had to pass the Navy Aviator Over Water Survival Training … So we go down to San Diego and, you know, do all these different things, kind of culminated all these kind of stress tests in the water.”

Teller shared that the actors were put in a “dunker” before explaining the underwater mechanism that was used for the testing in order to simulate a plane crash in the ocean.

“You get strapped to the chair. You get blindfolded and they now start lowering this thing, the dunker, they start lowering into the water. So you’re just sitting there, you feel the water kind of raise up, you take your last breath, the water now is over your head. And then it slowly turns upside down,” he recalled.

In order to pass the test, the candidates would first have to break the window of the aircraft to escape.

“So you’re upside down. So instead of climbing cross chairs like this, you’re upside down, you get out of your straps, which I think there was four. And then you’re climbing the seats like this and you’re blindfolded and you’re underwater and you’re upside down. So you’re basically getting water boarded,” he added.

“Jesus!” remarked Ray.

“I was like, dude, I’m an actor!” Teller laughed. “I don’t need to be no offense, Tom [Cruise], but like you do you, nobody else is in your lane man. Gimme some comedy lines or something.”

Listen above via the About Last Night Podcast with Adam Ray.