Tom Hanks meets Mr. Met.
At Saturday’s New York Yankees vs. New York Mets game, Hanks had a great interaction with the latter team’s mascot, dressed as his volleyball buddy Wilson, played by Hanks in “Cast Away.”
In a video of the game at Citi Field, Mr. Hanks, 69, appears on the jumbotron and is surprised by Mr. Mett, who has a large red handprint on his face that looks like a bloody volleyball.
After the two shook hands, Hanks yelled, “Wilson.” This is a famous line uttered by his character Chuck Noland in the 2000 film.
Hanks then took out his notebook and jokingly reviewed the mascot and the game’s points.
The Oscar winner previously reunited with Wilson in 2022, when he held a bloody volleyball over his head as he threw out the first pitch at a game between the Cleveland Guardians and the San Francisco Giants.
In “Cast Away,” Hanks plays Chuck, a FedEx troubleshooter who is stranded on a deserted island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific.
During his fight for survival, Chuck stains a volleyball with blood, names it Wilson, and adopts it as a surrogate companion.
Later in the film, Wilson accidentally washes Chuck’s raft away during a storm and ends up drifting off Chuck into the ocean.
In a 2024 interview with Reel Blend, Hanks explained how Wilson became important to the film’s plot.
“There was a different kind of script in that Chuck Noland was always talking,” he said. “When we arrived on the island, literally in the first shot, I said to[director Robert Zemeckis]’I don’t see any reason for Chuck to speak here unless I think there’s someone there.’
“And Bob said, ‘That’s great because we don’t have any lines until Wilson shows up.’ I said, ‘Perfect,'” Hanks recalled.
Hanks previously revealed in a 2009 interview with the BBC that he almost died after being hospitalized with a staph infection while filming Cast Away.
“Believe it or not, I was there for three days with something that almost killed me,” he explained. “I got an infection from the cut and it started eating away at my leg.”
Hanks was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 2001 for his role in “Cast Away.” He lost to Russell Crowe in “Gladiator.”
