Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(96)
Cruise went in a back door that led to a basement hallway. There was an elevator at the end of the hallway that went directly to the “secret” eleventh floor, where both Miscavige and Rathbun maintained offices. The World Series was under way—New York versus San Diego—and Cruise wore his Yankees hat. “He was not in good shape, spiritually or mentally,” Rathbun observed. “He was personally very enturbulated.”
After that episode of auditing, Cruise went quiet again. He and Kidman were in England filming Eyes Wide Shut for Stanley Kubrick. In any case, Rathbun and Miscavige had their hands full, fending off the lawsuits and reporters swirling around the McPherson case. Rathbun said that, in January 2001, he got a call from Cruise asking for help. Cruise said that he and Kidman were finished.
Cruise never offered a public explanation for the divorce, and Kidman herself was clearly surprised by his decision. She later revealed that she had suffered a miscarriage two months after Cruise moved out, and she had asked the doctors to preserve samples of the fetus’s DNA to prove that Cruise was the father. She pleaded with him to undergo marriage counseling at the church. Cruise refused, publicly declaring, “Nic knows exactly why we are getting a divorce.”
This was a decisive moment in Cruise’s relationship with Scientology. Rathbun provided the star with more than two hundred hours of auditing over the next couple of years. From July through Thanksgiving, 2001, Rathbun was with Cruise at the Celebrity Centre frequently, doing auditing rundowns and the PTS/SP (Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Persons) course. He paired Cruise with another actor, Jason Beghe, to do training drills; for instance, Beghe would think of a hypothetical date, which Cruise had to figure out, using the E-Meter, an exercise Cruise found really frustrating.
A young man named Tommy Davis began acting as Rathbun’s assistant. He brought sandwiches and helped out with Cruise’s children, making sure they were receiving church services. Despite his youth, Davis was already a unique figure in the church: He was a second-generation Scientologist, a Sea Org member, and the scion of the Hollywood elite. His mother was Anne Archer, a talented and popular actress who had starred in a number of movies, including Patriot Games and Fatal Attraction, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She had been a deeply committed Scientologist since she began studying with Milton Katselas at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in her twenties. She had always been proud to associate herself with Scientology in public, speaking at innumerable events on behalf of the church. Her son Tommy embodied the aspiration of the church to establish itself in the Hollywood community; indeed, he was living proof that it had done so. He had known Cruise since he was eighteen years old, so it was natural that he soon became the church’s liaison with the star, reporting directly to Shelly Miscavige. He had a relationship with Cruise similar to the one that Spanky Taylor once enjoyed with John Travolta. Rathbun assigned Davis to sit with Cruise in the parking lot of Home Depot in Hollywood while the star was doing his Tone Scale drills—guessing the emotional state of random people coming out of the store.
Cruise then took a break to promote his movie Vanilla Sky. The following February through April 2002, Cruise and Rathbun were once again working together full-time, mostly at Gold Base. Cruise was preparing for his role in The Last Samurai, directed by Ed Zwick, and between sessions with Rathbun he would go into the courtyard to practice his swordplay.
Cruise had begun dating the Spanish actress Penélope Cruz, and in the fall of 2001 Rathbun began auditing her as well. At the same time, he was still acting as Nicole Kidman’s Ethics Officer in the church, even though she and Cruise were engaged in a bitter divorce proceeding. One of the issues was whether the children would be educated in schools using the Hubbard method, which Kidman opposed. That was another battle she lost. Although Tom and Nicole split custody of their children, both Isabella and Connor soon chose to live exclusively with their father. Rathbun says this was because the Scientology staff, especially Tommy Davis, quietly worked to turn the children against Kidman. “Tommy told them over and over again their mother was a sociopath and after a while they believed him,” he recalled. “They had daily sessions with Tommy. I was there. I saw it.”
According to several former Sea Org members, Rathbun’s auditing sessions with Cruise were videotaped. Tom De Vocht, a former church official, said Miscavige would watch them and then regale his inner circle, over his nightly whiskey, with stories of Cruise’s confessions, dwelling especially on his sex life.1
Rathbun was opposed to the endless courtship of Cruise. In his opinion, there was no need for it once Cruise was securely back on the Bridge. Rathbun told Miscavige, “I think I’m done with this guy.” Miscavige responded, “He’ll be done when he calls me.” The leader was galled by the fact that Cruise had never contacted him when he came back for counseling. Rathbun continually urged Cruise to call “COB,” as Miscavige is known in the church—Chairman of the Board. At one point Cruise asked for Miscavige’s number, but then failed to call. His tentativeness was worrisome.
Whatever restraint Cruise felt about Miscavige eventually fell away, however, and Miscavige was once again folded into the star’s inner circle. There were movie nights in Cruise’s mansion. Miscavige flew with Cruise in the Warner Brothers jet to a test screening of The Last Samurai in Arizona. The two men became closer than ever. Cruise later said of Miscavige, “I have never met a more competent, a more intelligent, a more compassionate being outside of what I have experienced from LRH. And I’ve met the leaders of leaders. I’ve met them all.”