- Nick Offerman was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on May 6
- His entrance on the show was a Mission: Impossible-style surprise: removing a rubber face mask that made him look like another person
- Offerman talked about joining Tom Cruise in the upcoming Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Nick Offerman’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to make the most surprising talk show entrance in recent memory.
Appearing on the Tuesday, May 6 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Offerman, 54, revealed himself Mission: Impossible style: removing a rubber face mask that made him initially look like an entirely different person. Seated among the show’s band, he revealed himself as the saxophonist hiding in plain sight.
Tom Cruise’s action-packed Mission: Impossible franchise has made mask reveals a signature cinematic twist. In the 1996 original film, Cruise makes his entrance as Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt by removing the convincing rubber covering covering his face. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jon Voight, Simon Pegg and more have also been involved in shocking face switcheroos throughout the series.
Offerman joins Cruise, 62, Pegg, 55, and other Mission: Impossible regulars including Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff and Esai Morales in the upcoming eighth film, subtitled The Final Reckoning (in theaters May 23). He plays Sydney, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Angela Bassett as U.S. president Erika Sloane.
Not much else is known about the new film, directed by Cruise’s longtime collaborator Christopher McQuarrie and written by Erik Jendresen and McQuarrie. “This a much bigger movie and a more emotional one,” the director, 56, teased exclusively to PEOPLE. He added, “What you are seeing in the trailer doesn’t scratch the surface of what Tom does in the movie.”
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Offerman similarly played a political figure in another action-packed movie as the U.S. president in Alex Garland’s Civil War last year. In his Jimmy Kimmel Live! interview, the actor chatted about “Tomcat,” his nickname for Cruise, on the new Mission: Impossible.
“By the end of my first day I went home and said to my wife Megan, ‘I’m in love with Tom Cruise,’” he quipped. “He’s just constantly got that amount of focus and then sometimes he brings it to bear on you… That’s his superpower.”
Has Offerman been in a movie as big as The Final Reckoning? “No, man,” he told Kimmel, 57, with a laugh. “I was in Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. With all due respect — a fine, fine action movie.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. EST on ABC. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in theaters May 23.
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