Mission: Impossible 30 years on, Donloe’s honest shock

Rolf Saxon returned as analyst William Donloe nearly 30 years after Mission: Impossible’s wire-heist scene. In a look back, he recalls never seeing the full original script, watching Tom Cruise perform the stunt, thinking his comeback request was a prank, and

In the bright. octagon-shaped vault from the first Mission: Impossible. the rules are simple and brutal: touch the floor. make a sound. or even raise the room’s temperature and alarms will sound. Ethan Hunt—played by Tom Cruise—hangs from a wire through a ceiling vent and makes a download in complete silence.

It’s the kind of tension that sticks with you long after the credits. So when William Donloe—analyst William Donloe, played by Rolf Saxon—showed up again in 2025’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, fans didn’t just notice. They felt the callback.

Saxon’s return carries a special kind of disbelief. In the original 1996 film, he had been in only a few minutes. Most of that time, his character is shown getting sick and going back and forth to the bathroom. In the vault. he shares only a couple of shots with Cruise—just seconds—while he is in and out of the room because of a stomach illness.

Saxon said he loved the series and auditioned for the original film because of it. But once he got the part, the process surprised him. “That was one of the first scripts where we were never allowed to see the whole thing.”

Even on set, he says the shooting rhythm didn’t always put him close to Cruise. “When you’re filming, they take four hours to do two camera angles. So, for a lot of my filming, he wasn’t there. He doesn’t have to be up there because it’s just me in front of a computer screen.”

Still, he watched the stunt as it happened. “I saw him do it. The only time he used a stuntman for that was when they were setting up lights.” For a role that brief, that image stayed with him—yet he didn’t think he’d ever return.

Nearly 30 years later, he assumed the message asking him back was a prank. “I thought it was a friend of mine winding me up.” He said notifications came from his agent telling him. “‘There’s a film company in Europe that wants to know about your availability. ’” and then about a week later he heard it was Skydance. He remembered reacting with disbelief: “Skydance?. Seriously?”.

Then the call became stranger. His agent said it was Christopher McQuarrie who wanted to speak with him. Saxon described his reaction in the moment—thinking his friend in Scotland was behind it—until he joined a Zoom call and saw McQuarrie on the screen. Saxon said he was sitting there with a T-shirt on and a glass of wine when McQuarrie came on. and he put the wine down. “He offered me the part, and we spent about an hour talking about it.”.

The character’s return came with another shock: the story on his original scene never fully stabilized. “There was never a script,” Saxon said of the 1996 production. “They kept rewriting as they went along. I had a four-page scene, then it became an eight-page scene. Then it developed into a 12 or 14-page scene and we filmed it over two days. The entirety of that scene is gone. They never used it.”.

Saxon added that earlier drafts would have brought him in sooner. included a dog. made mention of his children. and had him and his wife Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk) go “off into the arctic together.” Despite those changes and the fact that the longer version of his scene didn’t make it. the eventual use of the character retained the same core function in the vault sequence.

In Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Donloe is initially set up as an adversary to Hunt because of the wire heist. Because Donloe’s job in the story is to protect the information Hunt stole, Donloe is transferred to a remote arctic outpost to monitor weather equipment as punishment.

Saxon said he had even been looking forward to making that conflict feel personal. “I was hoping I would be a bad guy because I love doing bad guys.”

But the film changes the emotional direction. Donloe reveals that he’s grateful to Hunt because he met his wife in his current position and managed to live a full. peaceful life. “I loved it. It was great,” Saxon said, adding that the character’s surprise return came with a surprisingly sweet approach.

Across both movies, he also keeps returning to one constant: Tom Cruise. Saxon said Cruise was remarkably the same from 1996 to 2025. “He was very much the same.” He called Cruise “an extraordinary filmmaker,” and he credits him for the entire opportunity. “This whole thing was his idea and without him, this wouldn’t have happened. That takes a special kind of individual.”.

Mission: Impossible Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Tom Cruise Rolf Saxon William Donloe 30th anniversary wire heist Skydance Christopher McQuarrie Tapeesa Lucy Tulugarjuk