During the mid-1990s, Bonnie View, the home built at Hemet especially for Hubbard, was renovated in anticipation of his imminent return. Both David Miscavige and Mike Rinder verbally cracked the whip over the gangs of Sea Org disciples who worked to build and furnish the house, berating them and urging them to work harder because time was running out before the great man returned. At one memorable briefing, Miscavige furiously told Sea Org disciples “If you think you are building a house for nobody to live in, you are all dreaming.” Once the building was completed, Miscavige installed a housekeeper to prepare the mansion for Hubbard’s return. For a true believer like Tom Cruise, already hailed as a messiah by fellow Scientologists, it was entirely plausible that his unborn child was somehow destined to take L. Ron Hubbard’s place.
Certainly the way Tom prepared for the child gave the impression that he was in tune with the mood of breathless anticipation in which Scientologists awaited their spiritual equivalent of the Virgin birth. Even the womb was no hiding place, the actor spending $200,000 on a sonogram machine to monitor the baby’s development. In the first weeks he took endless pictures of the growing embryo. “I’m a filmmaker—I need to see the rushes!” he explained. When he told one incredulous interviewer that the machine was strapped to Katie “twenty-four hours a day,” it was hard to know if he was joking or not. Katie later downplayed the issue, saying that they only had a sonogram at home for when their doctor was there. When physicians warned that unnecessary use of the sonogram machine could put mother and baby at risk, Tom retorted that he had not exceeded FDA guidelines.
If the sonogram machine was not enough, he also reportedly bought a fetus learning system that was strapped to Katie’s stomach. The device was apparently designed to impart information to the baby in the womb. On one occasion Katie was asked to leave a movie theater in Florida because the device, which emits a low buzzing noise, was annoying other patrons. It was also reported, and subsequently denied, that Tom had fitted Katie’s cell phone with a tracking device so that he would know where she was day and night.
The rest of the universe was more difficult to control. By now Tom was something of a laughingstock. Not only had the phrase “jumping the couch” entered dictionaries, but bloggers were saying that Katie had gone from “A list to alien, hip to hypnotized.” It was perhaps a sign of the panic inside Camp Cruise that only hours after returning from England, where he had basked in the adulation of Scientologists, he effectively fired his sister Lee Anne DeVette as his chief publicist.
On November 7—just a month after taking charge of Katie’s publicity—she was demoted to looking after his philanthropic activities, which were mainly Scientology related. Paul Bloch and Arnold Robinson, of the established Hollywood PR firm Rogers & Cowan, took her place. That Robinson joined Tom on a normally routine trip to Shanghai and Xitang, where he spent two weeks in November shooting Mission: Impossible III, demonstrated how little they trusted Tom to stay on track and on message. Once Tom Reliable, he was now seen by many Hollywood insiders as a loose cannon.
Even with Bloch and Robinson piloting the Cruise ship, there was no stopping the tsunami of gossip and ridicule engulfing the Hollywood star. Famously humorless—and litigious—in the face of speculation about his religion and his sexuality, he had little to laugh at later in November 2005 when the cartoon series South Park screened an episode, provocatively titled “Trapped in the Closet,” that poked fun at Scientology and the endlessly mutating rumors about his sexual orientation. It was bad enough that the half-hour show, penned by series creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, already had a running joke in which Tom refused to leave a clothes closet, the implication being that he was refusing to acknowledge his homosexuality. But perhaps more damaging was the tongue-in-cheek explanation of Scientology’s creationist myth, dealing with how the evil warlord Xenu sent millions of people to Earth to be blown up, their spirits floating in eternal torment. Not only was the exposition of this myth highly accurate—Stone and Parker had used a Scientology expert to write a background paper—there was a caption underneath that read: THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE. It was comedy genius, both funny and informative, eventually earning the show an Emmy nomination. Indeed, Steven Spielberg later told friends that he had learned more about Scientology from South Park than he ever had from Tom Cruise.
South Park airs on the Comedy Central network, owned by media conglomerate Viacom—which in turn counted Tom Cruise as one of its most important clients. When the episode aired, it caused a wave of controversy both inside and outside the company. Tom was reportedly so angry that he insisted the show not be broadcast again in America or aired elsewhere in the world. In Britain, Channel Four, which held the South Park franchise, pulled the episode for fear of attracting a lawsuit from the actor. Although Tom later denied being aware of the program—a tad disingenuous, given his obsession with his public image—the damage was done, as media and public rallied to the beleaguered writers. Stone and Parker received flowers from the makers of The Simpsons for their bravery, while the team behind King of the Hill sent them a message that they were doing “God’s work.”
It was a story that refused to go away—much to publicist Paul Bloch’s frustration. In March, singer and Scientologist Isaac Hayes, who had voiced the character of Chef on South Park, announced that he was resigning from the show, ostensibly because the controversial episode was scheduled to be aired again later that month. In his resignation letter, which used the unmistakable language of Scientology, he accused Matt Stone and Trey Parker of “religious intolerance and bigotry.” In response, Stone noted that “in 10 years and more than 150 episodes Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews.” Moreover, when he had talked about the episode in an earlier interview, he had sounded relaxed about it, admonishing Stone and Parker to “take a couple of Scientology courses, and understand what we do.”
It seems that Hayes’s Scientology masters were behind his resignation, especially when it was revealed that Hayes had suffered a mild stroke in mid-January and, according to friends, was still recovering when he decided to “resign” in March. In fact, it was eventually reported that the announcement had actually come from the singer’s Scientologist manager Christina “Kumi” Kimball. Observers concluded that Scientology had made an ailing man, whose wife was expecting a baby, quit his job to protect the organization’s reputation. As The Washington Post commented, “Hayes’s action makes Scientologists look like what many, many people assume they are: intolerant, humorless, and under the thrall of a demonic, soul-eating cult that brooks no dissent.”
Still, the dispute rumbled on, Tom Cruise reportedly issuing the ultimate warning—if the show was repeated, he would not do any publicity for his upcoming blockbuster Mission: Impossible III. In the face of this threat, the Viacom organization, the company behind both M:I & III and South Park, backed down. When the episode was finally pulled, Matt Stone and Trey Parker issued a statement saying, “So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for Earth has just begun! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!”
Cruise’s victory over South Park came at considerable cost. Hollywood insiders were realizing that Tom Cruise’s championship of Scientology was becoming a nuisance that could affect the bottom line. Previously favorable magazines became more critical. In March, Rolling Stone, edited by Tom’s friend Jann Wenner, carried a thirteen-thousand-word article minutely detailing the nefarious activities of Scientology, while Vanity Fair printed a cover banner asking: “Has Tom Lost His Marbles?” Retribution was not long in coming. For once Rolling Stone was not given access to the Mission: Impossible set to interview Wenner’s friend.
Yet the normal excitement surrounding a Cruise action movie was focused less on the film’s star than on his fiancée, the actor answering endless questions about Katie’s health as the days ticked down to the birth of his first biological child. Even though Katie’s mother
attended a baby shower in late March at the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood, the tabloids portrayed the actress as a “prisoner of the cult” who was rarely allowed out without Tom or her Scientology minders. Sightings of Katie going out on her own, to a local farmers’ market or for coffee, became regular staples of the gossip columns.
Certainly, when she moved in with her fiancé, she inherited an instant family, joining his mother, Mary Lee Mapother South, and younger sister, Cass Darmody, and her two children, Liam and Aden, in the sprawling Beverly Hills compound. As Katie was embarking on her new life, Mary Lee and Cass were rebuilding their worlds. In an extraordinary about-face, Tom’s mother had abruptly given up everything in 2005 to be with the son she doted on. Not only had she renounced her Catholic faith—she was a Eucharist minister—but also her husband of twenty years, Jack South, and her circle of friends in Marco Island, Florida. As a friend from her local Catholic church observed, “She left her faith and went to Scientology. I’m so sad I can’t believe it.” When Tom’s younger sister, Cass, went through a divorce in 2004, she and her two children came to live with him. Like her brother, Cass was dyslexic but insisted on homeschooling her two children in Scientology’s Applied Scholastics.
In this home environment, the precepts and principles of their faith reigned supreme, Katie accepting and adopting the rituals of Scientology as she approached her due date. If moving in with the future in-laws was daunting, Katie didn’t let on, saying enthusiastically, “There’s always something going on in the house and I love it.” Perhaps it reminded her of the noisy home life she’d enjoyed in Toledo, where, Katie told TV interviewer Jules Asner, she always felt a little bereft when her older siblings went to school and the house fell silent.
It was the manner in which she would be giving birth that caused the most comment. Hubbard’s followers have adopted a ritual known as a “silent birth,” the assumption being that any loud noises or words uttered as the baby is born, or even in the first week after birth, can have a detrimental effect on the infant. Hubbard is not alone, many believe that the “initial insult of birth,” when the infant goes from a warm, cozy world to bright lights and noise, can cause psychological trauma. The science fiction writer thought that such noise could produce damaging “engrams,” which would increase the need for auditing in the baby’s later life. From start to finish of the reproductive process, Hubbard counseled quiet. “Be silent during and after the sex act,” he exhorted his followers in his book Child Dianetics. Shortly before Katie went into labor, a number of six-foot boards were put up in Tom’s Beverly Hills home, reminding everyone who would be around Katie during the delivery to maintain absolute silence and stay calm.
On March 24, 2006, Tom’s nephew Liam even helped carry a stack of large cue cards into the couple’s home: “Be silent and make all physical movements slow and understandable,” read one. As Tom explained, “We’ve been doing seminars with the family just to educate them, so that everyone in the family understands. The kids, and even friends and different people.” He did point out to interviewer Diane Sawyer that the mother was allowed to make noise but not say words. When he announced that he was going to eat the baby’s placenta, it was consistent with the bizarre nature of Katie’s pregnancy.
Staff inside Tom’s compound needed no reminders of the need for quiet—and discretion. From the moment they were allowed through the high-security gates, they entered a world of controlled calm, with the emphasis on control. Staff were monitored by a German governess, everybody watching everyone else. They were encouraged to remain silent, and if they did speak, it was in hushed tones. The daily cleaning crew, which started at dawn and left by eight A.M. so as not to disturb Tom and Katie, was under strict instructions to operate in silence. The home itself had the feel of a tasteful but anonymous upmarket hotel suite or upscale private hospital. As one insider said, “The place was as quiet as you can get. It was unreal.”
At the entrance stood a giant portrait of Tom and Katie, but their closeness in the picture was not reflected in the home. They lived in separate wings, with separate bathrooms, bedrooms, and sitting rooms, Isabella and Connor in their father’s quarters. Ostensibly, they slept apart because of Tom’s snoring. How Hubbard would interpret the effect of that sound on the baby’s development was uncertain. On April 18, 2006—twenty years and three months after the death of L. Ron Hubbard—Katie was driven to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, where she gave birth, not to a red-haired boy, but to a baby girl, seven pounds, seven ounces, and twenty inches long. After carefully scrutinizing a couple of baby name books, the couple called their first daughter Suri, which they later discovered means “red rose.” Within twelve hours Katie and Suri had left the hospital, Tom flying his precious cargo to his four-hundred-acre ranch in Telluride, Colorado, for their week of Scientology silence.
While her birth was not quite the Second Coming die-hard Scientologists had hoped for, the arrival of Tom’s first biological child garnered worldwide attention, the hospital and their Hollywood home surrounded by dozens of photographers, reporters, and camera crews. As writer Mark Lawson noted drily, “There have previously been children whose birth attracted a certain amount of attention—Jesus Christ, Elizabeth Windsor, Brooklyn Beckham—but the arrival of Suri Cruise set a new record for interest in an infant.”
It did not take the attendant media long to point out the irony that along the same corridor in the same hospital on the same day, Brooke Shields, so recently berated by Tom for taking drugs for postpartum depression, was giving birth to her second daughter, named Grier. Nor did it escape comment when Nicole Kidman’s publicist pointed out that, contrary to media reports, she had not sent congratulations to Katie on the birth of Suri. It was hardly surprising. Her friends described the announcement of Katie’s pregnancy as akin to a “kick in the stomach.” At the time, Nicole was trying to have children with her future husband, troubled country singer Keith Urban. She was on the margins of Tom’s life—and, it seemed, the world of her adopted children. Not only were Connor and Isabella educated in the gospel according to Ron Hubbard, but Nicole saw them only rarely. Katie had effortlessly assumed the role of their stepmother, she and Tom endlessly photographed watching the youngsters play soccer for their school teams.
It appeared that Katie’s parents were as much on the sidelines as Nicole Kidman. While their daughter was giving birth according to Scientology ritual, they were three thousand miles away in their vacation home in Florida. It was Tom’s Scientologist mother, Mary Lee, who lived with the couple, who was present when a Scientology-sanctioned epidural was administered to Katie to ease her pain during labor. It was another two weeks before Katie’s parents, who had been by her side throughout her Hollywood career, saw their granddaughter. In the tabloid soap opera that Tom and Katie’s life had become, her lawyer father, Marty Holmes, was characterized as fighting a futile rearguard action to protect his daughter’s interests. If he couldn’t stop her from becoming a Stepford wife, at least he could ensure that she was a wealthy Stepford wife. By the end of May, Katie’s father and Tom had come to a $52 million prenuptial agreement, the deal reportedly ensuring Katie $3 million a year for every year of marriage as well as a $19 million trust fund for his daughter and grandchild whether the marriage went ahead or not. Marty may have lost his daughter, but Katie had gained a small fortune. It was said that the reason Katie was pushing for a prenuptial agreement was to speed up the marriage so that, once they had gone their separate ways, she could fight him for custody of Suri. Otherwise, she would be no match for his financial big guns—or his formidable clout in Hollywood. Newsweek magazine quoted a Holmes family friend as saying: “If she walks now, Tom will fight her for custody of Suri and Katie can’t outlast him in court. She knows she needs to marry him to get the money to fight him for custody.” This constant speculation was hard on Katie, who admitted to seeing all the gossip in the tabloids and on entertainment television. “Some of the crap that’s out there—the stuff that’s
said about my parents and my siblings—it’s really frustrating,” she told writer Jane Sarkin.
While she put on a brave face in public, it was not long before cracks began to appear in the façade.
CHAPTER 13
While Katie and baby Suri were quietly bonding in the Rocky Mountains under the watchful gaze of Scientology staff members, Tom was making as much noise as he could promoting Mission: Impossible III. In April 2006, less than a week after Suri was born, he flew to Rome for the film’s premiere, and for the next few weeks toured the planet attempting to re-create the movie’s breathless excitement. For the New York premiere in May, he traveled around Manhattan by motorbike, speedboat, sports car, subway, taxi, and helicopter before arriving at the movie theater. When he promoted the film in Japan, he hired a bullet train for himself and 150 of his fans.
Although the movie, directed by J. J. Abrams, the creative force behind the TV series Lost and Alias, had its fair share of leaping from skyscrapers, exploding bridges, and edge-of-the-seat, life-and-death drama, the star of the show, at least as far as the media was concerned, was sleeping in a crib in the Cruises’ mountain retreat in Telluride, Colorado. Nothing was too much trouble for mother and daughter, Tom reportedly dispatching his Gulfstream jet to California for crates of diet cherry soda and special organic food. When Katie appeared at the Hollywood premiere in May, the eyes of the world were on the young mother.
While Tom talked gaily of having ten children and getting Katie back in shape for their wedding, professional Katie watchers concluded that she appeared “tired and miserable.” Then she was whisked back to Colorado for what Tom called “b and b.” She did the breast-feeding and he did the burping—and changed the diapers. If they fed Suri on Hubbard’s barley baby formula—a recipe he claimed he recalled from Roman soldiers two thousand years ago—they kept it secret. Mother and daughter spent the summer out of the limelight, surrounded by his and her family, who entertained themselves with golf, gliding, and barbecues. While Tom took Isabella and Connor on the homemade motocross course, Katie diligently made a quilt that incorporated family photos in the patchwork.
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