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This Woman's Viral Run-in with Nic Cage in Italy Is Pure as Hell

He said he didn't even know his movie had won a Golden Globe.
Asya's sister and Nic Cage
Photo and screenshots courtesy of Asya via Twitter

In my humble, totally unbiased opinion, VICE is one of the foremost publications on the Nic Cage beat. We’ve taken several extended trips down the Cage rabbit hole, investigated the merits of the Oscar-winner’s best good/bad blockbuster, covered a giant interactive sculpture of Cage in a cage, ran an article with the headline “Nicolas Cage Is a Genius and I Won't Hear Another Word”—hell, we even interviewed Nicolas Cage using nothing but Nicolas Cage quotes.

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So when I saw my friend Asya, a 21-year-old student and prolific tweeter, had an, uh, interesting interaction with the Wicker Man himself, I felt morally and damn near contractually obligated to reach out to her about it.

Here’s how it all began: Last week, while vacationing with her family in Rome, Asya—who asked we withhold her last name for privacy reasons—spotted Cage in the Sistine Chapel, she told me.

“He was hard to recognize because of the hair/beard situation but I clocked his voice,” she said via text. “I didn’t want to draw attention to him in The World’s Most Crowded Place so I didn’t say hi or anything but (obviously) tweeted about it.”

Viral tweet! Good content! Possible research for a new National Treasure movie!

But wait—there’s more. As if the first sighting wasn't good enough, the pair's paths miraculously crossed again.

"Today when flying to London from Rome I was very very late to my flight… and the lady at the door asked my family if we were the Cages because there were only like five people left to board,” Asya said.

As fate would have it, Nic Cage was on her same goddamn flight.

“Once we were all seated my sister and I snuck over to business and crouched next to him and said hi,” Asya said. “He shared a birthday with my sister and was very excited to find out about it. I told him I loved 'Spider-Verse' and congrats on the Golden Globe and he was like, ‘WHAT?? OH IT WON!’” According to Asya, Cage then asked her “Was I good?” and wanted to know whether the noir shtick was funny.

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“I did my best to make it clear that he was fantastic,” Asya said.

Though the whole thing might sound way, way too good to be true, she has proof that it actually happened: Cage graciously took a selfie with her and her sister, and Asya’s mom managed to snap a photo of Cage using an overhead bin on the plane.

Maybe the world isn’t completely doomed after all.

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