Pom Klementieff asked Tom Cruise to kick her in the stomach for Mission: Impossible fight scene

Tom Cruise got strapped to the outside of a plane for 2015's Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation and rode a motorbike off a cliff for the latest sequel, Dead Reckoning Part One. But there is at least one thing the Top Gun star won't do in pursuit of on-screen verisimilitude while making the action franchise — kick Pom Klementieff in the stomach.

In the latest Mission: Impossible film, the Guardians of the Galaxy actress plays a highly dangerous character named Paris who is partnered with the movie's main antagonist, Gabriel, played by Esai Morales. During a sequence set in Venice, Paris has a fight with Cruise's super-spy Ethan Hunt and it was while shooting the encounter that Klementieff asked her co-star to give her a kick in the guts for real.

"I kept telling him to just kick me here," the actress recalls to EW, indicating her midsection. "I was squeezing abs. [I said], 'You can just go for it.' He was like 'No, no, no, no, no.' I was like, 'But it's going to help me!' But he wouldn't do it."

Christian Black/Paramount Pictures and Skydance Pom Klementieff in 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One'

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie cast Klementieff after seeing her playing Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and describes her character as "very, very, very much a chaotic element in the story. It doesn't matter how deep in the background she is, you're going to be watching her at all times and wondering what she's going to do." The actress herself says that Paris is someone who "destroys everything in her path. She's a rebel, she's a killer, she's extremely skilled and quite lonely too."

Much of the destruction caused by the character takes place in Rome during a sequence in which a Humvee-driving Paris pursues Cruise's Ethan Hunt and Hayley Atwell's character, who are in a small yellow Fiat. "I had so much fun shooting this scene," says the French actress. "It was so special to be on location in Rome. We were shooting during COVID, so we were very lucky to be here. I was trying to not laugh too much because I was having so much fun in the car following the Fiat."

Klementieff reveals that her character's name is a nod to the Great Paris, the magician-spy played by Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy on the original Mission: Impossible TV show. "When Christopher McQuarrie cast me for the role, he didn't know which name the character would have," she says. "It was cool to name me Paris, me being from France, and then they decided that I would speak French because I speak French in real life."

Christian Black Pom Klementieff in 'Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning - Part One'

It is unlikely that Nimoy ever wore anything as eye-catching on the TV show as the looks sported by Klementieff in the movie.

"She's very different style-wise from every other actress in the Mission: Impossible franchise," Klementieff says. "She has a side that's a bit more punk and she doesn't really give a f---. So that was cool."

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will release in theaters July 12.

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