Original Days of Thunder star blasts Anne Hathaway casting as ‘horrible choice’ for sequel
Randy Quaid has said Anne Hathaway as a ‘horrible choice’ for the upcoming Days of Thunder sequel.
Tom Cruise is set to reprise his role of NASCAR driver Cole Trickle in the sequel that’s set to land in June 2028, almost a decade after the original.
On Friday (29 August), Cruise shared a clip of himself and Hathaway to Instagram in which he confirmed that she’d been signed up to the cast as they posed in front of a race car.
In the clip, Hathaway, who is currently pregnant with her third child, said she planned to ‘have this baby, then make the movie’.
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The Instagram post has racked up more than a million likes and thousands of comments from fans who were delighted that Cole was returning to the big screen and celebrating the casting of Hathaway in her as-yet-unnamed role.
However, Quaid, who played Tim Daland in the original Days of Thunder movie, was not one of them.
In a series of brash posts on X, the 75-year-old actor hit out at the casting decision and said he would rather see Nicole Kidman, who also starred in the original, back for the sequel.
“We need Nicole [Kidman] back,” he wrote.
“Don’t be a p***y, @tomcruise. You need the original girl. It’s not personal; it’s filmmaking. Anne isn’t sexy, because and if you haven’t noticed, she’s pregnant.”
He then wrote: “If I were in control of production, a real sequel worth watching for DAYS OF THUNDER would be seeing Tom and Nicole together on screen again. We don’t need a new girl; we need a new race car!”
Kidman, who met Cruise while making the movie and went on to get married the following year, played Dr Claire Lewicki in the first film.
Quaid then said Hathaway was a ‘horrible choice’ and that the movie’s audience would agree.
“Anne Hathaway is a leftist, woke, horrible choice for DAYS OF THUNDER NASCAR audience who are MAGA,” he continued.
“The sexy older chick for Tom in this film needs to be Nicole. That’s the casting that would sell the idea. It’s interesting because when we made the first one there was also a rush to get it out; editors slept in the cutting room on shifts. This is a weird thing, like they want it to come out and tank.”
LADbible has reached out to Anne Hathaway’s reps for comment.
Hathaway is one of Hollywood’s most in demand stars and has starred in four films including the eagerly-anticipated The Devil Wears Prada 2 and the smash hit epic The Odyssey, for which she’s generated a lot of Oscar buzz.
Hathaway, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2013 for Les Misérables, also stars in the upcoming Colleen Hoover adaptation Verity, which is set to be released in October and will end a very busy year for the star.
Quaid’s last role was playing Rich the Postman in The Christmas Letter in 2024.
He has also appeared in Independence Day, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and The Last Detail.
Topics: Tom Cruise
Claire Reid