Risky Business: Tom Cruise's Flop Era with What Went Wrong | 69

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Tom Cruise, the biggest movie star in the world, is backstage getting ready to do a rare TV appearance.

He's going to be interviewed by Oprah.

The studio audience is going absolutely insane, and Tom is loving it.

The crowd is on their feet, jumping up and down, screaming their heads off, and Tom hasn't even gotten on stage yet.

Usually, Tom doesn't do too many interviews.

He doesn't like getting questions about his personal life, especially since he started getting so much flack about Scientology.

But he's got a new movie to promote, and he's in a brand new relationship that he's just dying to talk about.

So today, he's going to try a new strategy.

Tom is getting pumped up backstage.

He's feeding off the crowd's energy and pumping his fists.

Tom is jumping up and down to amp himself up even more.

He's got more energy than he knows what to do with.

He's ready to go.

Then the shouting dies down.

Oprah's manage to calm the crowd and that means it's time for Tom to make his entrance.

Tom starts sprinting out, time to get out on stage on that couch next to Oprah.

Today, he's going to show the world a new side of Tom Cruise.

What Tom doesn't know is that getting on that couch couch is going to be one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

And when he jumps off that couch, he's going to land at his rock bottom.

Tom Cruise is one of the most successful Hollywood stars.

We have never seen a celebrity meltdown quite like this one.

Cruise's behavior may have cost the studio as much as $150 million at the box office.

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From Wondery and At Will Media, this is The Big Flop, where we chronicle the greatest flubs, fails, and blunders of all time.

I'm your host, Misha Brown, social media superstar and defender of Short Kings Everywhere at Don't Cross a Gay Man.

And today, we're talking about Tom Cruise's fall from top gun to flop gun.

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I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at Night.

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Now, everybody, I'm so excited because on our show today, we have the co-hosts of the amazing podcast, What Went Wrong?

A show about disastrous movie production.

So you know they know a flop when they see one.

It's Chris Winterbauer and my friend, Lizzie Bassett.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Misha.

Yes, thank you for outing me that I essentially booked myself on your show

as I am a producer on this.

I'm here on my merits.

That's right.

I have no associations with Wandry, so I earned this.

Yeah, Lizzie's our Nepo baby.

We're here.

We love it.

Yay.

What's your favorite Tom Cruise movie?

I'm going Rain Man.

I really think he is amazing in that, and I think he's at his best when he plays a sociopathic asshole, which he kind of does in that,

but a charming one.

I love Tom Cruise.

I know it's going to be a problem.

I know it's a problem.

We all do.

He might be God.

College Chris says Magnolia, but real Chris says Jerry Maguire.

I love Jerry Maguire.

Also at his peak, a bit of a sociopath, but develops a heart in it.

But he's been in so many great films.

It's hard to choose.

Since we're fans of Tom Cruise, what comes to mind when you think about Tom Cruise?

Running.

A deadness behind the eyes.

While running.

Yes.

Well, today we are talking about Tom Cruise.

Today, he's still one of the biggest stars in the world, but we're turning back the clock to a time when his escapades on a couch turned into a gossip blog feeding forensy that momentarily toppled his career.

Now, Tom Cruise is born in 1962, and fun fact, his full birth name is Thomas Cruz Mapethur IV.

Did we know that?

I did know that.

I didn't know there were four of them.

Yeah.

I knew it only because his cousin is an actor as well

and has that same last name.

He's on Lost of all things.

Oh.

Yeah.

I mean, if your name is Tom Cruise, you have to be a movie star, but what kind of job would you expect a Thomas Mapither IV to have?

Fourth in line for a failing family business.

Not sure what it is,

but like, it's not doing well and we're putting all the money back into it to try to reclaim granddad's glory, something along those lines.

Yeah.

So, in 1990, Tom is 28.

He's handsome.

Say what you will about the man, but you can't deny he's a good-looking guy.

And he's one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

I mean, he's had huge hits with films like Top Gun, The Color of Money, Our Favorite, Rain Man.

He's got an Oscar Nom and a Golden Globe.

And in 1990, he is named People's Sexiest Man Alive.

Okay, brief sidebar.

Can you guess who the previous year's sexiest man alive was?

I mean, based on the current ones, I have to imagine someone old and generally out of touch.

I don't know.

Yeah, like Burt Reynolds.

You know?

Well, we're not too far off.

Let's take a look at a photo.

No!

How is it Sean Connery?

Conveniently cut off to not show his baldness.

Oh my God.

Good framing.

Wow.

So they've been at this for 30 years.

Okay.

Got it.

Yeah, Mr.

Sean Connery.

Still sexy, but probably at least 60 in this photo, I would guess.

50s, late 50s, 60.

Yeah.

I like that they call out that he's older and balder in the actual copy on the cover.

Yeah.

How would you feel if you got beat by Sean Connery for the sexiest man alive this year?

I think Sean Connery is still sexier than me and he's dead.

So just to be clear,

I would be personally fine with it.

Well, back to Tom.

In 1990, Tom also marries Nicole Kidman, making them one of Hollywood's biggest power couples.

So this is a huge year for Tom.

But the biggest decision he makes in 1990 might be the choice to hire a woman named Pat Kingsley to be his publicist.

Tom, he understands how important PR is for a movie star.

So Tom and Pat, they talk every day, often late at night, well after business hours are usually over.

And Pat says the two of them got so close they could almost finish each other's sentences.

And when Pat's daughter gets married, Tom buys every single gift on the registry.

I mean, that's the kind of movie star energy Tom is bringing to everything he does in the 90s.

Though I have to say, I've been to a lot of weddings and celebrations in the past few months, and that's got to suck for every other person who was going on that registry to find something.

Like, what are they going to get?

Yes.

I hope they like gift cards.

Tom Cruise has already selected the item on this list.

Yeah.

If you had a publicist, what kind of relationship would you want to have with them?

Oh, my God.

I don't think I ever want to talk to them.

I hope they're just handling everything for me so I can stay in my cave.

Yeah, like they could read the bad reviews that we get on our podcast, get the IP address of those involved and dox them for me.

That would be fantastic.

Yeah, sign me up.

Tom knows he needs a rock-solid PR person like Pat because he wants to keep his personal life as personal as possible.

If there's one thing that might make Tom less of a golden boy in the eyes of the public, it's the fact that he's been a Scientologist since 1986.

Mm-hmm.

Now, Scientology is definitely a thing in Hollywood.

Celebrities like John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and Elizabeth Moss have all been linked to Scientology at one point or another, though Tom has got to be the biggest Scientology star of them all.

But still, the general public is wary of Scientology, and there are some good reasons for that.

A writer at the LA Times described it as a pseudo-scientific cult, and there are all kinds of stories about how the group controls its members and prevents them from being able to leave the church.

Yes, I think you're referring to their billion year contract that they sign when they join the Sea Org, a billion years of scrubbing decks with toothbrushes.

Other than that, it's great.

I'm convinced that Tom Cruise views Scientology not so differently than like an athlete does a routine before the big game.

Like he joins Scientology and then he becomes incredibly successful.

And also deep down, I think Tom Cruise is possibly the greatest example of self-belief that we have in Hollywood.

And he, you could argue, maybe worships at the altar of Tom Cruise.

And he found a church that also worships at the altar of Tom Cruise a little bit.

And it seems like a, you know, a good fit in that sense.

So when Tom's doing press, it's going to be way better for him if he and Pat keep the focus off of Scientology and Pat succeeds with flying colors.

Pat is able to keep reporters from even asking about Scientology in the first place.

If they want access to Tom or any of the other mega celebrities that Pat represents, they better be careful with their questions about Tom's personal life.

Now, between 1992 and 1996, Tom stars in five huge hit movies in a row.

He's on an unstoppable movie star run.

We're talking a few good men, the firm, interview with a vampire, mission impossible, and Jerry Maguire.

Iconic.

In 1999, he's in Eyes Wide Shut, directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick.

And in 2000, he gets nominated for another Oscar for his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.

Geez.

Though Tom, with Pat's help, is a master of managing his public persona, there are still times when some weirdness manages to slip through the cracks.

Like in this interview with David Letterman, let's take a look.

No, but I, you know, I fly, I'm a pilot, and I was

one time time we were flying to Colorado, and I was flying this airplane that we had to go on oxygen, and I realized that we couldn't stay at that altitude.

I didn't have enough oxygen, so I had a passenger in the back, so we figured out that if we turned the oxygen off in the back guy, that we could make it at this altitude.

Wow.

So we,

you know, it wasn't dangerous or anything, you know.

So what happened when you turned this oxygen on?

He was very quiet.

He fell asleep.

He fell asleep.

He slept the whole way.

Well.

Oh my God.

But he sells it.

I'm laughing with him by the end.

I'm like, this is funny.

That guy deserved to go unconscious.

It's hilarious.

Yeah.

Depriving a man of oxygen is hysterical.

Yeah.

You know when you're making David Letterman uncomfortable that you've gone a little bit too far.

But you know what else I thought from that clip is he's so goofy.

Yes.

He plays such serious roles, but he's so like weird.

Super weird.

In a very charismatic way.

There is something really amazing about that clip though, where like the mask is really slipping.

Just how hysterically he's laughing about that.

It is spooky on a certain level.

Yeah, I mean, this Letterman appearance was so memorable.

It actually inspired another actor's portrayal of a serial killer.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

I do.

It is Christian Bale in American Psycho.

Yes, Christian Bale has a devastating read on Tom.

He's got, quote, intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nailed it.

Nailed it.

God, I love Christian Bale.

So besides the dead eyes, what are some other ways you might might describe Tom?

He is an unstoppable force.

He's relentless, right?

Like with eyes wide shut, the joke is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, right?

Tom Cruise is always down for one more take, but Stanley Kubrick is always down for one more take.

And so, supposedly, after 100 takes of him walking through a door, he finally was somewhat fatigued.

But he's like the only actor who won't break down after that duration of work because he is the energizer bunny.

Like, that's the only only way I can describe him as a performer.

Yeah.

I mean, he's got to be some level of adrenaline junkie too.

Like there is a manic energy to him, and especially what we know about his propensity to hurl himself off of buildings, cliffs, any high surface available.

There's something going on there.

He's reaching for something, Misha.

He's searching.

He's searching.

So in 2001, Tom makes a huge surprise move and divorces Nicole.

Now, according to a former higher up in the church, Tom's Tom's commitment to Scientology and a decision to get in deeper with the church is a huge factor in his decision to end his marriage.

However, Tom's never said that was the reason himself.

Now, you might think this divorce and the Scientology connection would be a huge story that would consume tabloids for months, if not years, but it actually doesn't wind up blowing up.

in the press.

Why not?

Well, that's all thanks to Pat.

Once again, she is able to work her PR magic and keep the story from spiraling out of control.

I mean, what do you think would have happened in that moment if he didn't have Pat?

Oh, nuclear disaster.

I mean, Nicole Kidman was a huge star in her own right at this point, but I also, I mean, I think she also kept very quiet about it because they're scary.

I'm scared.

I'm scared.

That's the end of his second marriage.

Yeah.

I believe he started dating Penelope Cruz relatively quickly after that.

Yes, they signed their contract shortly thereafter.

Right.

You'd have to imagine, like, think about the blowback on Chris Pratt, for example, ending it with Ana Ferris.

Oh my God, did we drag that poor son of a bitch through the coals for that?

And not a peep when Tom does a version of the same thing here.

Well, with Pat by his side, Tom's star power just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

And between 2000 and 2005, Tom stars in another five movies in a row that all make over $100 million domestically.

Mission Impossible 2 makes over $200 million domestic and over half a billion dollars worldwide.

Through it all, Tom is able to stay in line with some help from Pat when he needs a little extra hand to stop himself from going on about Scientology too much in public.

Based off what we're hearing about this so far, Pat's getting a raise, right?

50% maybe should be be the cut at this point.

Yeah, absolutely.

She's hiding a lot.

She's keeping a lot in the box.

Well, after his divorce, Tom makes two decisions that will have a major impact on his career.

He decides to become more involved in the church and he fires Pat and replaces her with none other than his sister.

Oh, no.

Who is also a big-time Scientologist?

Why would he do that?

Is she a publicist?

No.

Oh, no.

Okay.

Did he get a vision from L.

Ron Hubbard?

Yeah.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

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On Boxing Day 2018, 20-year-old Joy Morgan was last seen at her church, Israel United in Christ, or IUIC.

I just went on my Snapchat and I just see her face plastered everywhere.

This is The Missing Sister, the true story of a woman betrayed by those she trusted most.

IUIC is my family and like the best family that I've ever had.

But IUIC isn't like most churches.

This is a devilish cult.

You know when you get that feeling where you're just, I don't want to be here.

I want to get out.

It's like that feeling of, like, I want to go hang out.

I'm Charlie Brent Coast Cuff and after years of investigating Joy's case, I need to know what really happened to Joy.

Binge all episodes of The Missing Sister exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.

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So in April 2005, with his new PR team in place, Tom goes public with a new relationship.

He's dating Katie Holmes.

Katie is about to star in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, and Tom's next movie, also coming out in 2005, is Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

Tom's gearing up to promote the movie.

It should be a huge blockbuster, and Tom is getting paid $100 million to star in it.

What?

Whoa.

Just up front?

That does include back-end earnings.

Okay, well, regardless, quite a bit.

So, on a scale from $1 to $100 million at this point in his career, how much does Tom deserve to be getting paid?

Probably $100 million.

You're paying him that because you think you're going to make the money back.

So

if he can command that, I guess.

Well, ordinarily, debuting a brand new power couple would be PR gold if you have a movie to promote.

But this is an era when the internet is causing an explosion of gossip sites like Gawker, The Defamer, The Superficial, and of course, PerezHilton.com.

And they are all hungry for content.

It's a new era of celebrity snark and obsession that might have been tough for even an experienced PR person to navigate.

And Tom and Katie are about to become some of their favorite targets.

When the first photos of Tom and Katie drop, Perez Hilton writes, quote, we can't get enough of the Tom Cat show because eventually the paint will start to chip and we will hopefully see all the ugliness as openly as we've been shoved the lovey-dovey bullshit.

God, Perez Hilton.

Hunting for the best in people in the mid-2000s, aren't we?

Oh, man.

I have that like that like sparkly pink background of his blog just burned into my mind's eye forever because I definitely read that and it's made me mean.

Yeah, I was, I was just going to say, to be fair to Tom Cruise, we should have an episode on Perez Hilton.

Yes.

Ooh, good idea.

But what do you think about this take on celebrity couples?

It was kind of what we were doing at the time in the media.

Yeah, that and just absolutely ripping women for, you know, being anything over a size two.

You got the Renee Zellweger of Bridget Jones diary stuff.

I just saw a photo of that and, you know, she was apparently too fat to date.

And she is very thin in that movie.

It didn't age well.

No.

Yeah, I think people got tired of the idea.

of not just success, but some unachievable level of platonic or marital happiness shoved in their faces all the time, like as a marketing ploy from these couples.

Yeah.

Because it feels like bullshit, because even the most successful relationships are difficult at the end of the day.

And this idea that these lives, their lives are so easy, yeah, you're like, well, let's leave it in the sun and see if it festers after a while.

But hey, when it comes to promo for his new movie, Tom is keeping it old school.

He's doing a TV interview with Oprah, and he's got an interview set with her for May 23rd, 23rd, 2005.

And this is a huge get for Oprah since Tom doesn't usually do a ton of interviews like this.

Well, on the day of the taping, the crowd is going insane.

People in the audience are screaming.

They're jumping up and down.

They're practically out of control.

A lighting tech for Oprah's show would later say that the audience was going absolutely apeshit, just the absolute losing of minds.

So Oprah tries to get everybody to calm down, but she can't.

It takes her three tries before the crowd calms down enough that Tom can make his entrance.

And once he appears, the screaming starts right back up.

Now, the vibes, they're off right off the bat.

So, let's take a look at how Tom's acting just when he makes his entrance.

I'm scared.

I'm so excited.

Feel free to describe it as we're watching it.

Okay, okay.

He's in the building.

Oh, these ladies are losing it.

This is a revival tent experience.

Yes.

They're going to start handling snakes soon.

Someone just learned how to walk again.

Oh, oh.

Oh, wow.

Tom is like down on one knee.

Yeah, he's collapsing from joy.

He can't believe it.

Those women are rapturous.

Sure.

Yeah.

Rapturous.

Yeah.

One thing I really noticed was, you know, when he grabs Oprah by the arms and like shakes her a little bit.

Oh my God.

Don't shake the Oprah.

Don't shake Oprah.

It's Oprah.

Yeah.

Anyway, that energy continues, and that brings us to the infamous couch moment, which happens when Oprah asks Tom about his relationship with Katie.

So let's jump in.

Something happened to you.

Something happened to you.

I'm in love.

I've never seen you like that before.

The Tiger Woods.

The Tiger Woods fist punch.

I can't stand it.

I know.

We've never seen you behave this way before.

I know.

Have you ever felt this way before?

Tom just jumped on the couch for no reason.

I hate it.

I hate it.

Oprah's backed away as far as she can from the couch.

I'm not going to pretend.

See, you're not.

You know, Katie once told 17 magazine.

Yes.

Oh, he did it again.

What do you think was going through his head at this moment?

He's like a little kid who figured out something that made the adults laugh, and they're just doing it over and over again to try to kind of elicit the same reaction.

I don't know.

I mean, is this like an over-broadcasting of the love of how, how into the relationship he is?

That's what it feels like.

It feels like he doth protest too much.

Like, this is, this is a lot.

The irony is it seems like maybe he just went on antidepressants for the first time.

Chris, no, no, no.

Those don't work.

Scientology works.

Yeah, well, exactly.

What's funny, too, though, is it's extreme.

It's inexplicable.

It's unusual.

It feels almost like a pantomime of what he thinks would be endearing or human behavior in this moment.

I think Chris just nailed it, though.

This is kind of like an alien doing what they think someone would be doing if they're really in love.

You know, I couldn't help but thinking, looking back on this and, you know, how we all think and act and what we think is culturally appropriate in today's world, it's almost giving me the Howard Dean treatment.

Like, how fair was this?

Like, we're kind of blowing this out of proportion to like tank a man's career because he jumped on a couch a couple times.

But what we don't see in in this clip, and what I was kind of referencing to before, was that he grabs Oprah quite a few times.

He's doing a weird thing, too, where, like, he's just, he's taking up so much space in the way that he's like, you know, he's kneeling, he's jumping, he's leaning back, he's all over Oprah, he's all over the couch.

Like, there's something very domineering about the way that he is operating in this space.

And there's a little bit of it in the David Letterman clip, too, but it, it is very like, I don't feel, I don't feel safe.

Like, if I'm in there, I don't really want to be on that stage with him.

I think it's confirmation bias.

Like, I think a lot of people in the press and around thought this guy's a phony going into this.

And this was, I knew it.

This is bullshit.

I don't buy it.

And I think that people had been waiting for it and we pounced.

Well, the show, it just keeps getting weirder.

Katie came with Tom and is waiting backstage and Oprah wants her to come out too, but Katie doesn't come on stage.

And so Tom has to go back and drag her out.

Now, these Oprah clips turn into early viral moments for YouTube, and it's one of the biggest, earliest celebrity memes.

YouTubers have a blast taking this clip and remixing it in all kinds of ways.

One person edits it to make it look like Tom is shocking Oprah with lightning coming out of his fingers.

Another recreates the moment in the video game The Sims.

And the clips are not staying put on YouTube.

Bigger mainstream mainstream outlets like MSNBC and USA Today are linking the video as well.

It's such a huge cultural moment that even Sesame Street does a parody of the couch jump.

Oh, no.

That's amazing.

Oh, no, he's getting dunked on by Sesame Street.

Yeah.

I mean, do you remember this being such a big moment and having such an impact in the media?

Yes, 100%.

I mean, I was one of the garbage trolls reading all of the gossip blogs.

So absolutely remember this.

And I remember some sensation of what Chris is talking about of like, you know, oh, the golden boy is going down.

I was on the other side of it.

I was not a celebrity gossip rag hound at the time.

And I was and remain like a very big Tom Cruise movie fan.

And it just felt like a sea change all of a sudden.

And I didn't fully understand it at the time, but it went from Tom Cruise.

is one of the biggest movie stars, greatest actors in the world, to Tom Cruise is a joke kind of overnight.

So I do remember the vibe shift at the time, certainly.

Well, the vibes continue to get shiftier because Katie goes on Letterman on June 9th and tries to do some damage control.

And let's watch that clip.

This must be a very exciting time for you.

It's amazing.

You're in love with Tom Cruise, and from what I've seen, Tom has gone nuts.

I saw part of that Oprah Winfrey show.

Now, what was that like?

Was that scary to be there when that was going on?

Are you kidding?

Well, you were backstage, and it looked like maybe you were a little apprehensive about coming out.

Were you apprehensive?

No, no, no.

I was backstage, and I was watching, and I was just like,

oh, my God.

That's so

amazing.

Not her best performance.

Yeah, I will say.

She's in her 20s, right?

She's fresh off.

She was a teen star, right?

And she's kind of graduating into adult roles at this point.

I just remember her falling asleep in the Batmobile.

Rachel, Rachel!

That was straight up Dakota Johnson trying to pretend that she loves Lymes in that architectural digest tour of her house.

Yeah, Katie Holmes does not love Lymes.

So that's got to be as bad as things are going to get.

Tom's sister will have everything under control and she'll have Tom back to his old PR strategy of avoiding interviews until things die down, right?

Wrong.

Two weeks later, later, Tom decides he's going to go on the Today Show.

During his interview with Matt Lauer, also big yikes,

Tom apparently decides, you know what?

I've had enough of hiding my personal views from the public.

I'm going to keep letting it all hang out because that works so well for him on Oprah.

Tom decides he's going to give Matt his honest opinion about Ritalin and psychiatry, and the interview gets weird.

Let's watch.

And yes, maybe they've gone too far in certain areas.

Maybe there are too many kids on Riddling.

Maybe electric shocking.

I'm just saying, but aren't there examples where it works?

Matt, Matt, you don't even, you're glib.

You don't even know what Riddlin is.

If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt.

Okay, that's what I've done.

Okay, he sounds like Aaron Rodgers, let's be honest.

The second thing I'll say is one of those men is disgraced now and the other one is still a movie star.

I just, what I love the most about that is the War of the Worlds poster behind us.

It's just like seeing this out of context.

It's like, how did you get here?

Gentlemen, Matt, the aliens are here.

What are we talking about?

Yeah, you're being glib.

That is one of my favorite Tom Cruise lines of all time.

Yeah.

Well, Lizzie, when you've read the research, as I've done.

Sure.

Yes.

I'm so sorry.

Now, do you think it's possible that he's now deciding to let all of his opinions fly, not give a crap about what the media thinks because his sister is in charge of his PR and is also a Scientologist?

Yeah, there's no one telling him that this is weird, which I imagine was Pat's entire job.

All those late-night phone calls were just her being like, Tom, don't say that.

Don't say that out loud.

In just one month, from the Oprah interview to his Today Show appearance, Tom has managed to do some of of the most disastrous interviews of all time.

In August, Vanity Fair puts a question on its cover, has Tom Cruise lost his marbles?

And Tom might want to start thinking about turning things around fast.

He's got a new Mission Impossible movie to promote coming out next year.

So at this point, how bad do you think Tom wants to send out a bat signal?

for Pat Kingsley to come back and rescue him from this PR debacle.

You'd have to imagine he's, you know, fighting his handlers at the Scientology basement where he's being given blood transfusions, trying to escape, you know, to get her back.

Yeah, I don't know.

He seems to just kind of feel invincible, like he's speaking his truth, but then also making $100 million per movie.

Everything he's done has been gold up until this point.

When you've got this life experience, how could anything you think ever possibly be wrong?

That's what I'm thinking.

I mean, to be totally honest, this kind of makes me want a sister publicist who's just like, yes, everything you're doing is great.

Everything looks good.

It's all part of the plan.

Yeah, I don't know if he feels bad at this point.

I could be wrong, but I'm sure that there's people who have money on Mission Impossible 3, which, by the way, I watched last night, Misha, in preparation for this, and I'm not happy that I did.

I liked Mission Impossible 3.

It was insane.

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Well, one sign that the Tom Cruise feeding frenzy is not going away comes in November of 2005 when South Park airs its Trapped in the Closet episode that rips into Scientology and Tom.

Now, if you haven't seen the episode, don't.

It heavily features convicted felon R.

Kelly, so take my word for it.

As you can imagine, Tom is not happy about being mocked by a bunch of cartoon kids.

Now, Comedy Central is owned by Viacom.

Viacom also owns Paramount, which is releasing Tom's latest movie, Mission Impossible 3.

Allegedly, Tom's so pissed off about this South Park episode that he goes to Viacom execs and demands that they never show the episode again.

But Tom makes a classic stry-sand effect mistake here.

When fans of South Park hear about this, they vow to tank Mission Impossible 3's box office with a boycott.

And as all of this is going on, Tom realizes something that he should have realized a long time ago.

Having a sister do PR for him isn't working out.

He finally hires an actual PR firm again.

Sorry, sis.

So what do you think was the breaking point for Tom to make this decision?

Well, probably when his sister said,

nobody's heard of this South Park, Tom.

I was going to say, maybe it was the realization that the cross-section of South Park fans and Mission Impossible fans are, that's not a Venn diagram, it's a circle.

Like, you know, you need them to show up.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

Well, now, I'm not saying it's all thanks to South Park fans, but when Mission Impossible 3 opens in May 2006, it is a major disappointment.

It fails to even make its its budget back domestically.

It also, to this day, ranks dead last in box office for the whole Mission Impossible franchise.

So, Tom Star Power is looking like it's in serious trouble, and his new PR strategy may have just killed his biggest franchise.

Which means we are now officially in music, please.

Tom's flop era.

Yay!

Yay!

So excited to be here.

So a huge part of what makes this Tom's flop era is that in the wake of Tom's couch moment, gossip blogs and the press are running wild with stories about him.

And to learn more about these tabloid stories and rumors, let's play a game.

I'm going to tell you some rumors that are going around about Tom in the press at this time.

With keywords and phrases removed, you have to fill in the blanks.

Now, to be totally clear, all of these are unsubstantiated rumors in the press.

All right.

Are you ready?

Yes.

Oh, God.

Rumor number one:

Tom blanks Katie using a blank.

Ew.

Bathes?

Oh.

Using a loofah.

Uh,

Tom kisses Katie using

his hands.

I don't know.

I'm not going to do well at this.

Well, here's the answer: the rumor in the National Enquirer is

Tom tracks Katie's every move using GPS.

Oh, well, we all do that now.

I watch where my husband is on my phone when he goes to the grocery store.

I was going to say, I'm being tracked right now.

Yeah, we do that now.

But keep in mind, this is pre-iphone days tracking someone with gps back then was very much not normal that's true those were large also where did he put it yeah he's just like low jack your wife's purse it's the only way that you can do it got it okay our next tabloid rumor tom paid katie to blank

marry him oh

no The rumor is that Tom paid Katie to make sure they had their baby in time for the news to give a boost to Mission Impossible 3.

Anybody who's tried to have a baby knows that it's not, you can't time it like that.

Although, if anyone could, Tom Cruise.

That's true.

That's true.

It would be.

Tom Cruise mentally guides the one sperm that

it runs, just like Tom Cruise all the way to the egg.

With the power of Zenu, it gets there.

All right, our final rumor: Tom bought a blink as a present for Katie.

I'm going to guess some sort of weird animal, like a lemur.

I don't know.

Child, I have no idea.

Oh, look close.

Close.

Tom bought a sonogram machine as a present for Katie.

Yes, there are reports that Tom purchased an ultrasound so he could personally keep tabs on his and Katie's daughter during Katie's pregnancy.

Okay, okay, I gotta tell you this.

I am currently pregnant, and I will tell you, when you look at the screen, you have no idea what you're looking at.

It just looks like a little alien sea monkey.

That man has no business doing ultrasounds at home.

Every time we see it, we're like, is it supposed to look like that?

But then again, it's Tom Cruise.

He sees someone fly a plane.

He's like, I'm going to fly a plane.

He sees someone race a car.

I'm going to race a car.

He goes to the first sonogram and he goes, I could do this.

And he buys one.

It just, it checks out.

I'm not saying I condone it.

I'm just saying it feels consistent with Tom Cruise's hands-on approach to everything.

With all of this going on, people are getting more and more turned off by the idea of watching Tom in leading man roles.

As writer Ann Helen Peterson put it, quote, watching a Cruise love scene conjured visions of him manhandling Katie Holmes, which in turn made you cringe.

His love scenes have never been great, to be honest either.

It's interesting.

Despite being so handsome, he doesn't actually feel very sexual on screen, I think.

Even if you look at Jerry Maguire, like a lot of the energy is brought, or Nicole Kidman and Eyes Wide Shut, is brought from the female co-star.

So you didn't need a lot for the worm to turn on that one.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Tom's also losing his ability to connect with audiences, and it's starting to seriously hurt his career.

In May, Tom makes the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

That's great, right?

Wrong.

It's a story about movie star salaries and it's asking whether Tom deserves his huge paydays.

The headline says, is Tom Cruise really worth $100 million?

Let's take a look at this cover.

Oh, come on.

That is the worst picture.

And it looks like they stretched it.

Yeah, it does.

It looks more like his cousin than it does.

That's Tim Cruise.

That's not Tom Cruise.

He looks very bloated.

It's not a good picture of him.

They're implying that his salary is bloated through a bloated photo of his face.

It's pretty, pretty brutal, pretty brutal photo.

Chris, you're giving them a lot of artistic credit

for the connection.

Well, I did this.

I worked for Entertainment Weekly at the time, actually.

Yeah, I can also see the Christian Bale thing going on here.

Sure.

Yes.

There's a little bit of menacing behind him, behind his eyes.

Although, as a father of two kids, this is what I look like when I smile right now.

So,

just dead inside.

Just absolutely

confirm.

Well,

uh-oh, maybe it's time for another PR shakeup.

At this point, Tom might even be desperate enough to hire his sister back.

Who knows?

I mean, how much worse could things get?

Well, things are actually about to get much worse.

Paramount, the main studio Tom has worked with for almost 20 years, decides to end their relationship in August of 2006.

Whoa.

It's a huge blow to Tom and a sign of just how far his star in Hollywood has fallen.

Sumner Redstone, the head of Viacom, Paramount's parent company, says he was embarrassing the studio and he was costing us a lot of money.

Wow.

The true sin is that he let other people see it.

That's all they're saying.

Yes.

We can't can't hide it.

Yeah.

Tom's inability to connect with audiences, combined with him getting the axe at Paramount, sets the stage for a run of Tom bombs.

Even tying the knot with Katie in a literal castle in Italy can't help him win back fans.

And usually a swanky celebrity wedding would be catnipped for the press in the public.

Now, Tom's next movie, Lions for Lambs, comes out in 2007 and doesn't even make $15 million at the domestic box office.

Oh my god.

At the London premiere of his next movie, Valkyrie, there are anti-Scientology protesters shouting at the red carpet.

And the gossip logs, and Perez, still can't resist the opportunity to take shots at Cruz.

On one blog post, Perez writes, oh, how the loony have fallen.

We hear that Zenu is not such a great acting coach.

I just wish his jokes were better.

He's such a bitch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tough to root for Perez Hilton.

It is.

And finally, there's 2010's night and day.

It has Tom's least profitable opening day since 1992 and the lowest opening day attendance for any of his movies since 1986.

It's got a $117 million budget and makes just $76 million domestically.

Oh, no.

It's a bomb that even Ethan Hunt couldn't defuse.

Yeah.

$10 of those dollars were mine.

Saw it in theaters.

And the reviews, they're not good either.

The Hollywood Reporter says, Logic and plausibility take a holiday in this non-stop actioner that counts on stars Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz to sell the nonsense.

And at this point, the general public has already had more than their fill of nonsense from Tom Cruise.

He's become a major box office drag.

All the rumors about his personal life have people thinking he's a total weirdo, and it certainly doesn't help that he and Katie get divorced in 2012.

In short, nobody wants to buy anything that Tom Cruise is selling.

Now, This is the point in the show where we'd usually go through all of the embarrassing things that have happened since our subject's big flop, but in one of the greatest stunts of his entire career, Tom was able to successfully pull himself out of his flop era.

And his comeback really starts when he plays a small comedic part in a movie that we've been discussing, Tropic Thunder.

Yep.

So what was it about this part that made people love it so much?

He brings the same energy that he brought to glib Matt Lauer, but in a fun and comedic way.

And I just, I think he really sells this, but I think the most important thing is that he doesn't look like Tom Cruise, nor does he act like what we think of as Tom Cruise.

If I may offer a variation on that take, I think it is almost entirely because of the dancing.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

I re-watched it last night.

Because he's actually a pretty good dancer in real life.

If you watch like Risky Business, you know, he's done it in a few different movies.

He has rhythm.

And he dances so well badly and so freely.

He allows himself to be the joke in that movie in a way that i think made people realize wait a second this guy is actually capable of laughing at himself

so let's do a little where are they now

in february of 2010 cruise and paramount make up with each other awhile they start working on a new mission impossible movie The fourth Mission Impossible is a big hit.

It's his highest grossing movie since this whole saga kicked off with War of the Worlds, and it revives his signature franchise, another huge help for his brand.

Tom also seems to have finally gotten his PR act together.

He returns to his old strategy of avoiding the press as much as possible.

After all, you can't have any embarrassing interview clips go viral if you barely do any interviews.

And in the wake of the COVID lockdowns, when people weren't going out to the movies, the huge box office success of Top Gun Maverick led to Tom being known as the guy who saved Hollywood.

Yeah.

And now it's almost like the flop never happened.

Well,

it did have such an interesting impact on his career because before the flop, Tom Cruise was actually outside of Mission Impossible, he was the anti-franchise guy.

And I think that he transitioned from striving to be the greatest actor in the world to realizing he was just the biggest movie star in the world.

And if you look post-flop, it's almost exclusively franchise.

His career did take a big left turn.

It's still successful, but it's successful in a very different way than it used to be.

That's a really good point.

It makes me a little sad because I think what he was doing prior to this flop was really interesting.

And he took on some roles where, you know, he was not likable.

I wish we could see actor Tom Cruise come back a little bit because he is, he is so good.

Well, here on the Big Flop, we try to be positive people and end on a high.

So, are there any silver linings that you can think of that came about from Tom Cruise and maybe this moment in his career?

Oh, I do love those memes of him shooting lightning bolts at Oprah.

So

maybe that, maybe that.

Maybe Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.

I know certain elements of that movie have not aged that well, but boy is that funny.

I think it's an overstatement to say Tom Cruise saved Hollywood.

However, Tom Cruise's relentless desire to keep people going to theaters and his realization that spectacle is the driving force of that and his willingness to throw his body off an airplane, if that's what's necessary to do that,

I do appreciate deeply as somebody who loves movies and somebody who works in movies.

I take it back.

I think the silver lining here is that Pat got to say, I told you so.

I hope that lady was posted up with a martini, just swilling her drink around being like, I see you've come back, Tom.

The new Entertainment Weekly magazine cover, is Pat Kingsley worth $100 million?

Yes.

Now that you both know about how Tom Cruise couch jumped his way into a PR nightmare that blew up his brand and his box office returns, would you consider this a baby flop, a big flop, or a mega flop?

I would consider it, in retrospect,

a baby flop in terms of what he actually did.

But the reaction publicly was a big flop and then professionally almost a mega flop from Paramount's perspective to sever your working relationship with arguably your biggest star.

I'm going mega flop.

I don't care about in retrospect the fact that he's back to jumping out of every airplane and making hundreds of millions of dollars now.

It was, yeah, it was pretty damaging.

This was a pretty crazy downfall for a huge, huge movie star at the time.

And boy, those interviews are tough.

They're bad.

I hadn't seen them in like 10 plus years and they are just so, so cringy to watch.

Mega, mega flop, mega floppy flop.

All right, I'll move it up to big flop.

I'll call it, I'll do big online.

Lizzie's convinced me.

Well, thank you so much to our guests, Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer for joining us here on The Big Flop.

And of course, thanks to all of you for listening.

If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and review.

We'll be back next week with a story that somehow brings together a movie star, his chimpanzee silver screen companion, a circus clown, a faked death, and PETA.

It's Tanya Chimp Crazy Haddocks.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

If you like the Big Flop, you can listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.

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The Big Flop is a production of Wondery and At-Will Media, hosted by Misha Brown, produced by Sequoia Thomas, Harry Huggins, and Tina Turner.

Written by Anna Rubinova and Luke Burns.

Engineered by Zach Rapone with support from Andrew Holzberger.

Managing producer is Molly Getman.

Executive producers are Kate Walsh and Will Malnoti for At Will Media.

Legal support by Carolyn Levin of Miller, Korzynik, Summers, and Raymond.

Producers for Wondering are Adam Azaraff and Matt Beagle.

Managing producer is Sarah Mathis, and the senior managing producer is Callum Plus.

Music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Freesong Sync.

Theme song is Sinking Ship by Cake.

Executive producers are Lizzie Bassett, Dave Easton, and Marshall Louie for Wondery.

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