Perhaps the most defining aspect of the Mission: Impossible movies during their Christopher McQuarrie era has been their spontaneity. Outside of a renewed emphasis on Buster Keaton-like daredevil stunt work, each Mission film since 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation has been informed by the IMF characters onscreen, led by the indefatigable Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), knowing the loose framework of what the job is and then figuring out all the hair-raising details as they run along. Behind the scenes, it’s been much the same for the cast and crew, who likewise discover the plot specifics and their characterizations in an environment that’s equal parts improvisation and manifest destiny. Hayley Atwell even reveals to us that it wasn’t until late into the process of making 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning that she was told her character name. And it proved to be a profoundly moving moment for the actress. Cast as the biggest addition to the franchise canon over what might be the final two Mission flicks, Dead Reckoning and this week’s hotly anticipated Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Atwell was no stranger to blockbuster work after her time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She also knows what it means to be part of an organic ensemble with a long history of working in the British theater. Nonetheless, it was a touching surprise when, well into production on this two-part finale, Atwell was informed her aloof and thieving foil to Cruise’s Hunt is called… Grace. “It was a beautiful moment because towards the end of the last movie, McQ and Tom came to christen me and christen the character, and they did it as a reveal,” Atwell remembers. “They just said, ‘We want to tell you we’ve come up with the name and the name is partly based on how we’ve seen you work and how you’ve been consistently over time, and over this filming and training period.’ And they said her name is Grace.” It is an intriguing revelation that dispels the fan theory that she was named after Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (after all, Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa was introduced in the one with Casablanca as a location). It also meant much to Atwell who right up until seeing the finished film at a premiere was unsure what version(s) of the character she played would be selected by writer-director McQuarrie in the editing bay. “I felt incredibly flattered and moved by that, because they felt that’s how I approached anything that was asked of me,” she says. “So I feel very proud that I showed up every day, not knowing what was going to happen. And also when I even watched the movie, I had no idea the version of Grace that they were going to choose and that they were going to edit through, because there’s no set script. So to what extent would she be an all-knowing calculated femme fatale, an ingenue, a wide-eyed idiot savant, a mysterious, enigmatic vulnerable, complex person?  What version of any little thing that I did would be put together to paint the portrait of who Grace ultimately was and how she fits into the world of it? So to be given that name was particularly meaningful for me.” It’s an illuminating story and says much about what Atwell brought to Dead Reckoning, as well as the now imminent Final Reckoning. Indeed, the new movie finds Grace in a very different place than the last film, with the master pickpocket agreeing to join the IMF and Ethan at the end of Dead Reckoning. When audiences catch up with her in Final Reckoning, like everything else in the movie, she is in a state of constant flux and movement—but now as Ethan’s teammate. “She’s like ‘oh no, you’ve made me care about you!’” Atwell laughs. “The cost of that is so great! Life was a lot easier when I didn’t care and I was just out for myself.” Yet having worked on and off in the world of Mission: Impossible for nearly five years now, Atwell feels like she truly understands what it’s like being part of the team. For instance, there was a day high above the snow line in Svalbard (Norwegian territory deep in the Arctic Circle) where the British actress looked around her to see a sun high in the sky and dogs pulling a sled beneath her feet. Something clicked. “It’s a beast, this kind of unquantifiable, unparalleled traveling circus of an adventure where anything could happen because anything can change at the last minute,” Atwell considers. “And so [because of] the maintenance and the training and the preparation and the drilling, I was able to do anything that happened to be asked of me on that day—whether it’s a sudden scene change or a sudden added action sequence that tried out different things that we ended up not putting in the movie, I know now what it takes and I think when we got to the Arctic, there was a sense of surrender, total surrender to the process of that, rather than figuring it out, trying to prove myself, or force anything.” There was also acceptance that when you’re on Mission, nothing ever truly ends. By her own estimate, Atwell must have wrapped The Final Reckoning 14 times over the last few years. The first couple instances were highly emotional moments, but she now smirks at how soon she’d be back in the thick of things, one way or another.  “It reminded me of when you meet up with someone and then you’re walking down the street and you say goodbye and you go your separate ways, but then you realize you’re going in the same direction so you have this awkward sense of a false goodbye,” says Atwell. Thus during her recent stint on the West End where Atwell played Shakespeare’s Beatrice opposite Tom Hiddleston’s Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Atwell even found herself spending her one day off in a London studio in a 10-meter tank doing Final Reckoning scenes. “Every time I wrapped on Mission… they’d say ‘and that’s a wrap!’ and I’d be like, ‘I’ll see you next week! Bye guys.’” Not that she is complaining, by her own admission Atwell has trouble saying farewell and savored every moment she was back in the team. Like Grace, they’ve made made her care. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens in theaters this Friday, May 23.