The breakout star of Love Lies Bleeding, Katy O’Brian, is also seeing her fair share of franchise roles. Prior to her latest A24 movie, O’Brian has played parts in projects for Disney like The Mandalorian and Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. She will also be seen in the upcoming Twisters, where she says, “We filmed a tornado movie during tornado season in Tornado Alley.” She would reveal that her character is “a little sillier” than she has been used to, but she won’t go as far as to call it a comic relief role. “I don’t want to say comedic role, and then everyone’s like, ‘She wasn’t funny.’ We’ll say it’s silly and fun.”
Now, according to Deadline, O’Brian is joining the cast of Mission: Impossible 8 as filming continues underway for the Tom Cruise action film. Details surrounding the upcoming sequel are as sealed as the missions in the movies themselves, so it is not known at the moment what role she will be playing in the movie. O’Brian, who no doubt sports an impressive physical presence, could likely play a part that is heavily involved in action scenes. Recently, pics have shown up online from the production that features Cruise doing what he does best — running.
Despite the title change of dropping the “Part One” from the subtitle, Mission: Impossible 8 will indeed be telling the second half of the story that began in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, with Ethan Hunt out to destroy an AI system called The Entity, which is housed in a sunken Russian stealth submarine.
Cruise is being joined in the cast by Hayley Atwell, reprising her Dead Reckoning role of thief-turned-IMF-recruit Grace; Vanessa Kirby as arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis, a.k.a. the White Widow, a character who was previously seen in both Fallout and Dead Reckoning; Ving Rhames as IMF agent Luther Stickell, who has been part of this franchise since the first Mission: Impossible movie in 1996; Simon Pegg as IMF agent Benji Dunn, who joined the party back in Mission: Impossible III; Henry Czerny as CIA director Eugene Kittridge, who was introduced in Mission: Impossible (1996) and finally made his long-awaited return in Dead Reckoning; Rolf Saxon as William Donloe, a CIA analyst who got in trouble after Ethan Hunt accessed his computer way back in the first Mission: Impossible; and more Dead Reckoning reprisals: Esai Morales as the Entity-serving terrorist Gabriel; Pom Klementieff as Gabriel’s former ally Paris; Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis as US Intelligence agents Briggs and Degas; Mariela Garriga as Marie, a mysterious woman from Ethan and Gabriel’s past; Mark Gatiss and Charles Parnell as the heads of the NSA and NRO;. There are also a handful of new additions to the franchise: Holt McCallany as Secretary of Defense Bernstein; Nick Offerman as Sydney, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddingham, and Lucy Tulugarjuk in unspecified roles.