Movie fans were excited this week to see Warner Brothers drop the trailer for Digger, a Tom Cruise feature coming in October. We talked with a young South Bend man who got an up-close look.
22-year-old Jalen Batiste Waddell was the local man invited out to Los Angeles for the release event. On TikTok and Instagram, Waddell likes to post about pop culture, especially movies. His TikTok account, Jalen Never Misses, has over 218,000 followers and 41 million likes.
Those numbers apparently caught the studio’s attention. Waddell says he was thrilled to meet Cruise, who chuckled when he told him that his grandparents had introduced him to his movies. His grandparents, by the way, include WVPE’s own J Cubed host Karl Smith.
Waddell says Cruise was there for a Q&A and then took the time to speak with them individually.
”He was kind of exactly how I would imagine him to be, like he was just like super high-energy, so when I got that one-on-one with him, I also just told him how he was just a big inspiration for me creatively, and he just encouraged me after I told him that," Waddell says. "He was just excited to talk to us all because he knows what he means to us all, so he just wanted to give us that opportunity.”
Waddell this spring earned a bachelor’s in creative writing and production from Ball State. This fall he’ll start pursuing a master’s in directing at Columbia College Chicago.
Does he hope to make movies, maybe someday starring Cruise?
”I mean, movies obviously are great," Waddell says. "That’s probably the best thing you could make. But I just want to make anything with a camera, really. I’m not trying to limit myself to one medium of entertainment and production. I just want to tell stories. Create cool videos, cool movies, cool stories.”
