Pat McAfee had a lot to figure out when he landed his first acting role. The former NFL punter is set to play a Marine Corps drill instructor in Peter Berg’s World War II drama “The Mosquito Bowl,” and he knew he couldn’t just wing it in front of the cameras.

As luck would have it, Tom Cruise stopped by “The Pat McAfee Show” to promote a “Mission: Impossible” project weeks after McAfee learned about the role. The ESPN personality wasn’t about to let that chance go to waste.

Pat McAfee Turned to Tom Cruise for Acting Advice

“I have a daily talk show, and Tom Cruise came on to promote ‘Mission: Impossible.’ And I just found out about a week and a half, two weeks before that, that I was going to be playing this role,” McAfee told Variety.

Cruise stayed longer than expected, and after the show went off the air, McAfee used the opportunity to ask him about his acting debut. “So, we interviewed Tom Cruise for 15, 20 minutes. He was way over time, which I was very grateful for,” he recalled.

The ESPN personality didn’t immediately tell Cruise that he was the one playing the drill instructor. Instead, he framed it as a hypothetical, asking what advice Cruise would give a friend who had landed his first acting role as a drill instructor in a Peter Berg World War II movie. Cruise quickly caught on.

“And he goes, ‘Are you the friend you’re asking for?’ And I go, ‘Yes.’ And he didn’t blink,” McAfee said.

Once McAfee came clean, Cruise got straight to the point. He spent the next seven minutes walking him through what it takes to bring a character like that to life, asking questions McAfee hadn’t even thought to consider.

“And for seven minutes, he broke down acting. He said, ‘Have you ever trained with the D.I.s? Do you know the D.I.? What’s the backstory? What’s the attitude? What’s the history? What does Peter Berg want you to be?’ He started laying it all out for me,” McAfee said.

Cruise’s advice gave McAfee a better idea of just how much work lay ahead. He still had to get a feel for how real drill instructors carry themselves, so he visited Parris Island, a Marine Corps recruit training depot, to see them in action.

Looking back on the conversation, McAfee admitted he had been in over his head but left with a much better idea of where to start.

“I immediately realized I was in very, very deep waters. But I had the blueprint for what I needed to do,” McAfee said.

“The Mosquito Bowl” tells the story of college football players who enlisted in the Marines after Pearl Harbor and played a memorable game before deploying to Okinawa.

The film premiered at AFI FEST on Oct. 22, 2026, ahead of its planned theatrical release on Oct. 30 and Netflix debut on Nov. 25.