“He maintains his authority by never being to blame for anything,” Pegg says.

Simon Pegg knows Tom Cruise’s secret.

The actor has shared how his pal handles his mistakes, noting he isn’t the type to apologize.

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“If something goes wrong and it’s his fault, he’ll flatly deny it,” Pegg told The Times. “And then if someone corrects him, instead of saying sorry, he’ll just say, ‘Yeah,’ and wink at me.”

Pegg, 52, says this is how Cruise “maintains his authority.”

“I admitted f—ing up once, and he said—with a wry smile, I hasten to add—’Simon, don’t do that.’ He maintains his authority by never being to blame for anything,” Pegg said.

Pegg’s friendship with Cruise, 59, began in 2006 when they shot Mission: Impossible III together.

“He likes me because I make him laugh,” Pegg said. “I’ll pull him up on stuff and I can be frank with him. But he’s still Tom Cruise. When you’re on set, he’s the boss.”

Even Cruise’s bad moods usually have a reason behind them, Pegg said. “When his ankle was hurting and he was running on it a lot, he was quieter and a little bit more spiky, but normally we’re laughing a lot.”

Pegg has watched his friend deal with being in the public eye for years.

“I’d be so stressed out,” Pegg said, “but he’s very okay with it. He understands that’s the price for the level of movie star he is. He’s perhaps the only movie star left.”

Cruise, who’s currently racing across big screens nationwide in Top Gun: Maverick, still faces scrutiny about himself and his personal life, but Pegg says his friend just lets it go.

“People have these opinions about him, which are based entirely on gossip, and he doesn’t really do anything to combat that,” he said. “When I hear people speculating about his weird religion and making assumptions about who he is as a person, I say, ‘You know he risks his life for his audience?'”

After their time on set together, the men have maintained a texting relationship, although Pegg told the Daily Mail that his wife is unimpressed when the biggest movie star in the world drops him a line.

Mission: Impossible III was Pegg’s first outing as IMF Tech Benji Dunn. At the time, Pegg says, he was “kind of a wreck” as he struggled with alcohol addiction and would show up drunk on set to film his scenes.

But by the time they were filming 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the two men were hitting the gym together, Pegg told the Mail Online at the time.

“We train together a lot of the time,” Pegg said. “And yes, Tom called me Six-Pack Pegg. He thought it was funny. I didn’t mind. At 48, I was quite pleased that I was able to locate my abs again.”

Cruise and Pegg will be back in action next year in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. You can watch the trailer below and read our full breakdown here.