There is a lot to love about this interview with actor and pro-wrestling legend David Arquette for All Elite Wrestling’s Hey! (EW) web series. For one thing, Arquette is displaying the kind of silly, permastoned affect that can make one famous on the local news, while getting roasted by interviewer RJ City for 14 minutes straight. This is particularly darling if you’re aware that they’ve wrestled and worked together enough for us to safely assume they are dear friends. Then there’s the point at which City asks if he’s willing to talk about a quote about him from Mark Ruffalo, which in turn triggers something in his Hollywood royalty brain where he just starts spitting out amusing anecdotes involving huge celebrities.
First there was the time “that Grease guy” called him up to try to get him to go to rehab (forgetting John Travolta’s name technically counts as an Adele Dazeem reference, I think,) and then there was the time he called Tom Cruise “Sean.” “I once mistaked [sic] Tom Cruise, I said ‘Hey, Sean!’” he recalls fondly. This is, quite frankly, the coolest story I’ve ever heard. I did a little research and discovered that this incident dates back to a dark time in Arquette’s life, when he was drinking a lot, and that it occurred at a holiday party hosted by Adam Sandler. “Someone says, ‘Hi David!,’ and I said, ‘Hi Sean!’ Then I realized it was Tom Cruise,” he told Howard Stern. “And his beautiful wife was there.” He chalks the mistake up to having been “a little wasted” at the party, but in his defense, Arquette has probably met a lot of very good-looking white dudes with brown hair and beautiful wives in his lifetime — after a while, I imagine they do start to blend together! However, the use of “Sean” suggests he mistook Tom Cruise for either Sean Connery or Sean Penn, which is probably where the “being a little wasted” comes into play. However, considering he also calls Reese Witherspoon “Reese Wilverspoon” in this very video, it’s possible Arquette just has a penchant for saying the names of extremely famous people incorrectly or not at all, which is such delightful and important work.
