Here we see Katie Holmes, husband Tom Cruise, and daughter Suri at David Beckham’s soccer game on Saturday.  They were there with Tom’s daughter Isabella and the three Beckham boys.

I ain’t sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

So here it is sweeties. Your play by play of Friday’s Oprah Interview with Tom Cruise. I should state for the record that in general, I tend to be sympathetic of Oprah. She’s not perfect and she has, I think, lousy taste in reading material, but I’ve always liked her and she reminds me of my stepmother, so I tend to cut her slack. However, she managed to break the bonds of my patience this time, although she had the help of Mr. Cruise.

From the start of the interview it was like some nightmarish Robin Leach “When Wealthy Folk Visit Each Other”. Both Katie and Tom were on hand to welcome The Oprah and guide her in to “the mudroom”, where Chez Cruise had provided Oprah with her own brass plated cubby with her own monogrammed slippers to wear around the house. “Let me know if these aren’t comfortable,” says Tom. “I can always get you something else,” which somehow brings to mind a sweatshop in back full of pre-clears busily sewing Oprah labels on the back of an infinite number of slippers. Katie gives her totally authentic sounding contractually obligated “I love you” before leaving to “take the kids into town”.

Others have commented on Oprah’s somewhat tacky obsession, possibly even mania, with money and expensive things. Girlfriend is always bringing up the Benjamins, and not necessarily to her credit. Anyone remember the time she interviewed Anderson Cooper, whose old money mom Gloria Vanderbilt was in the audience, and she started going on about how she’s always impressed by people who don’t have to work who do make something of themselves? You could just see that Cooper was so appalled and mortified. It was a car crash of old money and the nouveau riche.

I’m afraid this unseemly aspect of her personality was in full force. First, she walks in to the huge spotless multi-jillion dollar kitchen which is possibly bigger than the average person’s home and says “It’s just SO NORMAL and kitchen like!” and then proceeds to compliment the wood paneled refrigerator. Show of hands of everyone out there with their fridge paneled to match the rest of their solid oak kitchen. Later, when Tom is showing her all his scripts, which he’s had leather bound, she becomes almost apoplectic over how much he could get for these on eBay, which she insists on repeating multiple times. It was not attractive.

Possibly my favorite moment of “When Wealthy Folk Visit Each Other” comes after visiting the gym, the toy wing, the spotless kitchen and then the dining room, Oprah tells Tom why she loves his home, and this is a direct quote: “[it’s] so earthy and so simple…Oh! There’s the photo that Annie Liebowitz did [of TomKat & Suri for Vanity Fair]”. Uh, yeah. I’m not going to ask for a show of hands for how many of you have an Annie Liebowitz portrait of yourselves on your earthy, simple dining room wall.

Lots of other sites offer a play by play of “the Interview” that follows. Oprah does bring up the “tough” questions, though you get the sense that Tom had received a list of them weeks before hand. As I watched the interview, I realized something about the way Cruise handles interviews which I’ve never witnessed so clearly before. Cruise has two ways of answering questions. Well, technically three.

One is to recite a very carefully rehearsed anecdote which has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Hence we get him telling the (highly suspicious) sounding story of how he himself carefully waxed the floor so his socks would slide for that shot in Risky Business, and later the oh so cute story about how he dressed up like Santa but his genius daughter Suri saw through his sham immediately.

The second similar way he has of answering questions is to repeat a carefully rehearsed sound bite. Thus he repeatedly said in answer to the Oprah Q&A about Brooke Shields “It came out wrong” and “It should be up to the parents”. Since we’re talking about Tom accusing Brooke of ruining her career by taking anti-depressants, and no one said a darn thing about giving drugs to kids, it sounded really weird.

The third way he had of answering questions is to simply repeat the question he’s just been asked in the form of a statement. “Were you surprised?” “Oh…yeah…I was totally…you know…surprised….absolutely surprised.” “Were you prepared [for the crazy fame that followed Risky Business]? I mean, how could you be?” “Oh, no, no, of course not….how could anyone be…prepared” God, I wanted to slap him myself through the TV, and though I haven’t been giving Oprah credit for much in this dog and pony show, I do give her credit for not smacking him.

He declined to say anything substantive about Scientology except “I think it’s best for people to read about it for themselves,” and then quickly reassured the world that respect for other religions is an absolute tenant of faith for Scientology, and OF COURSE he believes in God. I was particularly interested in how he handled Oprah’s questions about whether he was preventing Nicole from having access to the children. He described their relationship as “good, easy”, and “we share custody, that’s what we do.” Then, in case we didn’t get that, he said again that they “share custody, whenever”. So, whenever what? Whenever Nicole makes up her mind to move back to LA and stops behaving like a Suppressive Person?

Honestly, it’s hard to tell sometimes if Cruise is a lousy liar or just a lousy interview. Perhaps it’s the same difference. I have no doubt that he’ll be totally controlled and perfect for Monday’s chapter in front of a live audience, especially since the whole point of the show is to laud him for a movie which most people barely remember from twenty five years ago. Yay! Let’s pretend we all care! Yay!

I don’t think I can bear to watch it. Best of luck to you if you manage!!

[Above is a guest post from KT at Populucious, please visit often, and thx KT]

The Globe Magazine is featuring a cover story by none other than NYT best-selling author and filmmaker “His Highness Ian Halperin,” about actress Nicole Kidman, her two teenage children Isabella and Connor, whom she adopted while married to actor Tom Cruise.

Perhaps this is why Halperin became mum on the subject of Nicole during my visit to NY to see his film premiere, “His Highness Hollywood.”

Andrew Morton, Ian and I were discussing their two books, comparing similarities on the subject of Scientology, when we brought up Nicole Kidman, Ian suddenly excused himself and disappeared. Apparently he was holding out on us. I clearly need to work on my super-sleuth skillz.

In any case, the Globe’s article reveals Ian met Nicole while working undercover and the two became close enough for her to confide in him her concerns about her ex’s involvement in Scientology and most especially, the decision for their two children to be raised as Scientologists, rather than as Catholics, which both Nicole and Tom were before joining Scientology.

Here’s some details from the Globe story:

*She would have left Cruise prior to their 2001 split, but was afraid of what the Church might reveal during “intimate auditing sessions.”
*Cruise demands all his significant others devote themselves completely to Scientology
*She wants Isabella and Connor to explore other faiths.

Ian was quoted as saying this about Tom and Nicole’s differing thoughts about the kids and Scientology:

“Nicole wants her kids freed from Scientology. She definitely wants them out of the church. She had a lot of problems about bringing them up as Scientologists, but Tom insisted on it. That was a big issue in their split.”

Ian also suggests Nicole, who is expecting a child with her husband country star Keith Urban, is planning to move to Los Angeles to be closer to her two older children and mainly as an effort to help extract them from the secretive, insular church.

“She was tired of Tinseltown and wanted to raise the kids in a farm-like setting, but Cruise was attached to Scientology and to L.A.” Ian said Nicole and Keith’s current plans to relocate to LA are part of an overall effort to “be closer to her kids.”

According to Ian, Nicole also expressed concern for Tom’s increased visibility and power within the Church of Scientology, where essentially officials in the Church have stated Tom is just a regular parishioner with no more control or importance than any other member. Andrew Morton’s book claims differently, and asserted Tom was in fact, the Number 2 guy behind CoS president David Miscavige.

“Nicole is concerned with how powerful Tom has become in the church. This guy has no religious background, or accreditation to lead a religious institution, but they rely a lot on what he says. He’s the de facto head of the church - that’s what Nicole said. The Church’s primary goal is to make as much money as possible and take over the world.”

Nicole’s fight for Isabella and Connor won’t be easy, Scientology does not take kindly to outsiders interfering in the family affairs of members of the Church, especially someone as important as Tom Cruise. If Nicole pushes too hard, she may find herself declared a Suppressive Person, or SP, in which case both Isabella and Connor will be forced, as Scientologists, to serve her with a disconnection letter and Nicole may find herself completely cut off from her two children.

Tom Cruise rarely does anything spontaneous. Even his ’seemingly-spontaneous’ couch calisthenics on Oprah’s show in 2005 was deemed to be premeditated. All this over-the-top exuberance for finding his “true love” (third time’s the charm, right?) in actress Katie Holmes after only a few weeks of knowing each other, was surely to help make the transition that much more believable. Sadly, contrived spontaneity rarely goes over well.

In the years following this epic interview, Oprah Winfrey and Tom Cruise’s names have become inextricably linked to one another, and created as they say, an elephant in the room. Oprah for her part, was seen as complicit in giving Cruise a forum to really behave in a disingenuous way. She sat back and while he let the crazy out, all the while secretly wondering “WTF?” is going on. Oprah received zero credibility for her Tom Cruise interview, and while she’s still insanely popular, she knows the whole TC interview hangs over her like a dark cloud.

But what about Tom Cruise? What does he have to gain by going back to Oprah’s couch? He too is dogged with the knowledge he let his inner Scientology-induced weirdo out for all the world to gape upon. Surely he’d be better off letting this connection die a excruciatingly slow death. Or perhaps not.

With all the speculation as to what Oprah will be asking Tom, and what Tom will be shilling this time, why not go to the authority on Tom Cruise, the man who spent two years studying, dissecting and analyzing the world’s most famous, and now infamous actor, NYTimes bestselling biographer Andrew Morton.

I asked Mr. Morton for his thoughts on this upcoming interview and he seemed pretty interested in the process that went into bringing these two forces together once more, considering how poorly it went last time. From Morton:

But wait, there’s more…

Yes Nicole..er..David..er…Wait, who’s in charge again?

In part four of our series highlighting the powerful interview Glosslip had with ex-Scientologist and former Executive Producer of Golden Era Productions, Marc Headley, a duplicitous David Miscavige is revealed to the public.

From all we’ve seen in the mainstream media, RTC President and Church figurehead David Miscavige has a very close relationship with famous actor, and top celeb Scientologist Tom Cruise. In Andrew Morton’s book about Cruise, this relationship was fleshed out fully and the reader comes away seeing two like minded idealogues in Cruise and Miscavige. Both are driven, ambitious and fierce in their pursuits, sharing a rather manly like bond, akin to brothers who are constantly seeking both approval from the other, and to out do each other in varying degrees of one-ups-manship.

It’s hard to imagine a rift existing between them, but then again, their commonality, Scientology, is known for causing deep divides in even the closest of loved ones.

Marc stated Tom Cruise left the Church of Scientology throughout the 90’s because he became disillusioned with the faith. Jason Beghe backed this up, and Andrew Morton hinted at it in his book.

According to Marc, David Miscavige saw Tom’s second wife, actress Nicole Kidman, as the trouble source for Tom (or PTSP), and he wasn’t going to let his best friend get away that easily.

Here’s the scoop straight from someone who was there to witness the betrayal this caused between Miscavige and Cruise, and what was done to “heal” the divide:

DO: You worked with Tom Cruise quite regularly..

MH: Well, no, I didn’t actually work with him. What had happened was in the early ’90’s when he first became a Scientologist he had to do his training to become an auditor. While you do your training you also get auditing and you kind of go back and forth. In order to do that, you need to get somebody who hasn’t had any auditing. In the early ’90’s I had had very little auditing, if any. So I was the perfect candidate for Tom Cruise, so he actually audited me while he did his auditor
training.

So I got to know him then, but in the mid ’90’s, when he got up to OT3 he left the church. He was not being a scientologist. And during those times…

DO: He was disillusioned, wasn’t he?

MH: Well, he basically thought it was complete bullshit. He read all the stuff about…

DO: The wall of fire, right??

MH: Yeah, he got to all that Xenu stuff. “Xenu stuff?”, and he was like “I’m out of here”. And he left. And when he was in Scientology, though, several Scientologists were implanted into his staff network. His assistants and his people, people that helped him run his career. And they were Scientologists. So, when he became upset with Scientology these people stayed with him. And they were the eyes and ears for David Miscavige. On when they were going to be able to get Tom Cruise back into Scientology. So for many years, Tom never came back to the Int Base to do anything. We never heard of him, we never saw him.

DO: Was that when he was married to Nicole?

MH: Absolutely.

DO: So this is during that time?

MH: Totally. And Dave would comment regularly about how how much of an out-ethics person Tom Cruise was. Because he’s off with Nicole and he does whatever Nicole wants, and Nicole. Totally. The facts surrounding him getting back into Scientology are very speculative, but from all that I know, the church seized upon the fact that Nicole had gotten pregnant.

And that Tom, up until that point, was not able to have children whatsoever. So her being pregnant was a major faux pas for her and that she had been cheating…So then out of nowhere, Tom Cruise divorces Nicole Kidman, completes OT4 in the same week. And now, out of nowhere, he’s the most dedicated Scientologist in the whole world. Just like overnight. He’s with Dave all the time. And it was bizarre to people that worked at the Int Base.

Ten years this guy was gone and all of a sudden he just shows up out of nowhere. And now he’s just a fanatic. He’s claiming that he’s been in Scientology for fifteen, twenty, years and you’re just like “What the hell, man? Where did that come from?”

Part of the appeal to celeb Scientologists to join the “religion” is the how much the tech focuses on the “individual” and making them the best they can be. Magnifying this mind-set in people already prone to self-absorption and narcissism could only result in what I’d call a “Super-Ego” mentality. Of course, Marc’s anecdote below illustrates how this is manifested from the top down at Gold Base, Scientology’s brain-center.

MH: The whole reason that you’re there, that anyone is there, in Scientology or in the Sea Organization, is because they have an internal urge to help other people. That’s it. So, when you see all these things happening, people being treated like this, it totally goes against the grain of what you’re there for. And sooner or later I think a lot of these people are just going to leave. More and more of these stories will come out and more of these different things. In 2003 Dave Miscavige instituted a rule that all staff at the Int Base facility have to call Tom Cruise “Sir”.

Okay, now, Tom Cruise is a public scientologist. He’s a parishioner. Some of these people that have been in the Sea Organization at the Int Base have been in the Sea Org for 30 years. Dedicated their life.

And the only person that they have to call “Sir” is someone who’s senior in rank to them. But now, this new guy, Tom Cruise, garners the title of “Sir”. And if you don’t call him “Sir”, you might get away with calling him “Mr. Cruise”, if the situation deems that you couldn’t just say “Sir”. But if you called him “Tom” or “T.C.”, that’s it, you were in trouble. People actually did get in trouble for calling him “Tom”. And it was made a big deal of, like “blaughty-blah” called Mister Cruise “Tom” today and that person was made an example of.

What job security do you have if you’ve been in the Sea Organization for 30 years and a movie star can come along and suddenly he’s senior in position to you and … nd when he hasn’t dedicated nearly as much of his life to doing what you’re doing, that kind of thing.

Wow, and we thought Tom jumping on Oprah’s couch was weird, speaking of which….

Just think of how the course of Hollywood history would have been altered had these two stayed together!  What’s that, you didn’t know they were an item at one time?  Well, neither did the rest of the world, until Cher told everyone that back in the eighties, yes, she and Tom had a bit of a fling:

The singer had a brief relationship with the actor, 16 years her junior, at the start of his career.

Only now, as she publicises an upcoming run of shows in Las Vegas, has her version of events emerged.

Reflecting on their affair, she said it could have been a “great big romance” if they hadn’t been forced apart by their filming schedules.

They are thought to have met at a White House fund-raising event in the mid- eighties when he was basking in the success of his hit film Risky Business.

Cher, 39 at the time, is said to have been smitten almost immediately with the 23-year-old. […]

The couple are thought to have dated for several months.

Their affair is understood to have ended when Cruise met Mimi Rogers, six years his senior, who was to become his first wife. He separated from Miss Rogers after three years in 1990.

It’s said that it was Mimi who introduced Tom to Scientology.  So think of where Tom might be today had he and Cher stayed together, or at least had more of a serious relationship.  At the very least, poor Katie Holmes would have found a man more suitable to her age and interests.

But in all honesty…do you think that, in this photo, Tom is thinking about what a close call this one was?  Cher, for all her plastic surgery, hasn’t aged well.  She looks like a caricature of her former self.  It’s sad when you see stars still playing the same character they’ve been playing for four decades.

Cher might be thinking the same thing, but it’s a tossup as to who escaped what fate.