Manny Jacinto says it wasn't 'shocking' that all his “Top Gun: Maverick” lines got cut: 'It fuels you'

"At the end of the day, Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise," the "Acolyte" star said in a new interview.

Manny Jacinto may have just turned heads in his biggest role yet — in a hit Star Wars show. But he recently reflected on the last time he was in a major franchise project, and how his part changed dramatically.

Before starring in Disney+'s The Acolyte, Jacinto was in Top Gun: Maverick alongside Tom Cruise, Glen Powell, and the rest of a star-studded cast. Although the film didn't hit theaters until 2022, Jacinto joined it in 2018 and trained for months in actual fighter jets with his costars.

Then the movie was finished, and he discovered that all of his dialogue had been cut from it, leaving him without much screen time.

Related: The Acolyte finale ending and cameos explained

"It wasn’t shocking to me,” Jacinto said in a new interview with GQ. “There was this sense of where the film was going [on set], like I can see them focusing the camera more on these [other] guys and not taking so much time on our scenes. Fortunately, it still was a great experience — you get to see this huge machine at work, see how Tom Cruise works, and you get to be a small part of this huge franchise."

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Jacinto's main takeaway from seeing his part reduced?

"It kind of fuels you," he said, "because at the end of the day, Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise. It’s up to us — Asian Americans, people of color — to be that [for ourselves]. We can’t wait for somebody else to do it. If we want bigger stories out there, we have to make them for ourselves.”

Related: Watch us fly Top Gun: Maverick stunt plane, survive the Goose death move, and barf

Fast-forward to 2024, and Jacinto has just wrapped playing a huge role in The Acolyte. Following the revelation of his character's true identity in the series' fifth episode, the actor told Entertainment Weekly just how much he was getting out of the project.

"This was the first time I really got to dig into something with so much action and really make use of my dance background," Jacinto said last month. "And I was just like, 'Let me do everything. I want to do everything.' And they let me do most of it."

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.