No one has seen Henry Czerny's Kittridge since the original 1996 Mission: Impossible film in which the character mistook Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt for a mole in the IMF (Impossible Mission Force). In a new interview with Czerny (part of soon-to-be-published interview about the 25th anniversary of the original film), Slash Film's Josh Spiegel got to ask how the character might feel about that 25 years later as he returns for the upcoming seventh film. Czerny was quoted as pointing out that his character's mistake has become a major driving force behind Kittridge's movements since, which Czerny found exciting as an actor:
“I decided that he’d been to all the agencies on some level or other, had a good idea now of how the game is played and what his place is in this mechanism of national intelligence. I figured he’d been through all of them at this point, and he’d been schooled by Ethan 25 years ago. He’s known Ethan, he’s known he’s done these things, and he knows that Ethan is someone to go to, but he also feels that it’s not ever good to have one person controlling anything.”
During the interview, Czerny offered some humor by discussing how he got the call to return to the franchise almost exactly 25 years to the day after he was asked to join the first film. Though he admits that writer/director Christopher McQuarrie admitted to him during the initial call that he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to do with the character yet. Still, the filmmaker said, “I want to dig around with Kittredge. Are you up to it?” to which Czerny, after thinking a couple minutes, responded with an encouraging “Let’s do it.”
When discussing Kittridge's driving force of his mistake with Ethan 25 years ago, Czerny said that their relationship this time around will be intense, given their history, but otherwise cordial:
“There’s a respect, but at the same time, it’s like fire. We need fire because we’ve got to cook, but you got to be careful with it. If you let fire do what it wants, you’re in trouble. The relationship that they had in the first one, Ethan schooling Kittridge on who the mole really was and catching the mole, was the springboard to 25 years of Kittridge going through different agencies so he wouldn’t be schooled again.”
Czerny added that he was also just happy to be along for the ride again, “The fact that they’ve done it for this long and this well is extraordinary. I’m glad that [the franchise] is up and running after 25 years. And I get a chance to come back as someone who’s 25 years older and offer up whatever I can to it.” Without a doubt, Czerny's team spirit brings even more enthusiasm to the upcoming ambitious seventh installment, but fans will have to still wait quite awhile as filming is still underway due to the halts created by the COVID-19 pandemic along with the implementation of safety procedures that allowed the production to recommence. The film is currently set to be released in theaters next year, May 27th, 2022 followed by a release on Paramount+ in July of 2022.
Mission: Impossible 7 co-stars Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Frederick Schmidt, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Shea Whigham, Esai Morales, Rob Delaney, Charles Parnell, Indira Varma, Mark Gatiss, and Cary Elwes. Stay tuned!
Red light! Green light!