Randy Quaid Slams Anne Hathaway’s ‘Days of Thunder 2’ Casting, Wants Nicole Kidman Instead

Legacy sequels rarely arrive without at least a little friction from the original cast, but few reactions have been quite as blunt as the one currently swirling around Paramount’s upcoming NASCAR revival. Tom Cruise’s return to the racetrack decades after his 1990 breakout has already generated plenty of buzz, and now one of his former co-stars is making sure his opinion gets heard too.

That original film, ‘Days of Thunder,’ turned Cruise into a box office draw playing hotshot driver Cole Trickle, backed by a cast that included Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid and Cary Elwes. Nearly four decades later, Paramount has confirmed Cruise will return for a sequel, this time joined by Anne Hathaway, who’s set to play a racecar team owner and engineer opposite him.

That casting news hasn’t sat well with Quaid, who played team owner Tim Daland in the original film. Taking to X, the actor unleashed a series of posts criticizing Hathaway’s involvement and arguing that Kidman should have been brought back instead to reunite with Cruise onscreen.

“Anne Hathaway is a leftist, woke, horrible choice for DAYS OF THUNDER NASCAR audience who are MAGA,” Quaid wrote. “The sexy older chick for Tom in this film needs to be Nicole. That’s the casting that would sell the idea. It’s interesting because when we made the first one there was also a rush to get it out; editors slept in the cutting room on shifts. This is a weird thing, like they want it to come out and tank.”

Quaid didn’t stop there, following up with additional posts pushing for Kidman’s return while directly appealing to Cruise himself. “We need Nicole back. Don’t be a p—y, @TomCruise,” he wrote, before adding in a separate post, “If I were in control of production, a real sequel worth watching for DAYS OF THUNDER would be seeing Tom and Nicole together on screen again. We don’t need a new girl; we need a new race car!”

The ‘Days of Thunder’ sequel has been years in development, with reports of Cruise’s involvement circulating since talks first began, alongside speculation about how the project would fit around his other commitments, including his work with director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and an upcoming space-set project for Universal. Jonathan Levine is set to direct the follow-up, with Cruise producing alongside Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper, the same producing team behind the original.

It remains unclear whether any other members of the original cast, including Kidman, Duvall or Elwes, will factor into the new film in any capacity. Hathaway, currently one of Hollywood’s busiest working actresses with multiple projects already released this year and another on the way in October, confirmed as part of the sequel announcement that she plans to give birth before production begins, as she’s currently expecting her third child.

Quaid’s outburst comes amid his broader public reputation for conservative political commentary in recent years, a shift that has increasingly defined his public persona outside of acting work. Whether his comments have any real bearing on the project moving forward remains to be seen, but they’ve certainly added an unexpected wrinkle to the sequel’s early buzz.

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