A Look Back At The Strange Drama Between Tom Cruise And Justin Bieber

In one corner, we have a world-famous music artist covered in tattoos and wearing the latest designer clothes. In the other stands one of the most iconic actors of our time who has a decades-spanning career. Yep, it's as strange a match as it sounds. Celebrities having beef with one another is nothing new, but the drama between Justin Bieber and Tom Cruise threw us all for a loop.

Bieber is known for rising to fame in the late 2000s after videos of him singing went viral on YouTube. His impressive vocal range, stylish dance moves, and unforgettable fashion helped to propel Bieber into teen idol status. In 2020, he became the youngest solo artist to have an album top the Billboard's Hot 100 seven times, per MTV. 

Tom Cruise has been known as Hollywood's leading man since the 1980s. Cruise has starred in many blockbuster action movie franchises, including "Top Gun," "Jack Reacher," and "Mission Impossible," just to name a few (via IMDb). You might not think these two would run in the same circles, let alone have a problem with the other, but they had the most unlikely of feuds.

From a challenge issued on social media to hilarious deepfakes, here's a look back at all the weirdness that was the drama between Cruise and Bieber.

The beef between Justin Bieber and Tom Cruise all started over a random tweet. We've all had those moments where we shared something on social media that makes us cringe to look at now. But most of us don't have anywhere near the follower count of Bieber, who is sitting at more than 110 million followers on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

In June 2019, Bieber decided to issue a challenge on X that had social media reeling. "I wanna challenge Tom Cruise to fight in the octagon," Bieber declared. "Tom if you don't take this fight [you're] scared and you will never live it down. Who is willing to put on the fight?" (via USA Today). He even went so far as to tag Dana White, president of the UFC, so it's safe to say he was feeling pretty confident about the match. 

It was a totally strange and spontaneous challenge at which social media users had to poke fun. One X user shared a hilarious tweet depicting Tom Cruise saying absolutely nothing before Justin Bieber appears with a mic asking, "You want to fight?" But it turns out it was all a joke for Bieber. That same month, he told TMZ he only posted the tweet because he'd recently watched an interview with Cruise and had the actor on his mind. He added that if the fight were actually to take place, he'd need to get in shape first because, in his words, Cruise has "dad strength."

Things only got weirder in the Justin Bieber and Tom Cruise drama in 2021. A true music fan, Bieber couldn't hold onto his anger toward Cruise when he stumbled across a video of Tom Cruise "shredding" the guitar on social media. He was thoroughly amazed at the actor's skills. Per TMZ, the popstar responded on his own social media by captioning the video of Cruise with "@tomcruise I'm impressed with your guitar skills. But you could still catch these hands my boy." He followed it up with another clip of Cruise captioned, "All jokes aside @tomcruise [you're] shredding that guitar."

Unfortunately for Bieber, the "person" he was complimenting wasn't Tom Cruise. In fact, it wasn't really a person at all, at least not in a sense. Bieber had been duped into believing that an AI-generated version of Cruise was the actual actor.

In Bieber's defense, the @deeptomcruise TikTok account does a fantastic job of creating an almost seamless replica of the famous actor. Created by Chris Ume, the parody account features videos of a young Tom Cruise's face superimposed over preexisting clips of other people. In one video that has over nine million views, "Cruise" can be seen dancing to "Jiggle Jiggle" by Duke & Jones & Louis Theroux. If it weren't for the absolute absurdity of the situation, many people might be fooled into thinking it really was Tom Cruise busting a move.