Photo via Angela George/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), Eva Rinaldi/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
May 11, 2021, 2:02 pm
Comedian and Twitter user known for his concise takedowns of critics and certain politicians went on “The Howard Stern Show” on Monday in part to promote his memoir Yearbook and also to tell the story of how Tom Cruise once pitched Scientology to him as a totally normal religion.
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Not long after the iconic Oprah interview that featured Cruise jumping on couches and turning from beloved actor to cautionary example right before the eye of the public, he and Rogen were exploring the idea of doing a project together with director Judd Apatow.
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According to Rogen, the three of them got together for a meeting, and Cruise managed to make things weird during his attempt to explain that he’s totally not weird, it’s just that the entire pharmaceutical industry was scheming to make him look bad.
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“A few hours into the meeting, the Scientology stuff comes up and how weird he’s looked in the press lately,” Rogen said of Cruise. “He said, ‘I think the pharmaceutical industry is making me look bad.’ Then he said, ‘You should see what they do to my friend Louis Farrakhan.’”
It’s important to note here that Louis Farrakhan, a Nation of Islam leader, is notoriously antisemitic, having repeatedly pushed claims that Jewish people control “the media” in the U.S. and other nations and comparing them to cockroaches at least once. Rogen, on the other hand, is Jewish.
Regardless, Cruise attempted to make the same kind of claims about Scientology, which he got sucked into as early as 1990, saying that the media and/or big pharma had conspired to make the organization appear worse than in was.
“If you let me just tell you what it was really about … just give me like 20 minutes to really just tell you what it was about, you would say, ‘No f—ing way. No. F—ing. Way,’” he said to Rogen.
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This particular anecdote also made it into Rogen’s book, as outlined by some excerpts captured by journalist Yashar Ali.
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According to the book, Cruise not only called Farrakhan a friend but denied that the man is antisemitic and called Jewish people cockroaches when Apatow pointed it out.
“No! See, that’s the media!” Cruise said. “They’re distorting all of it! Take my religion, for example–Scientology. They make it seem sooooo f—ing different than it is!”
Perhaps the best quote, however, comes from Rogen: “Big Pharma made you jump on Oprah’s couch?”
The comedian did confess to Stern that Cruise had him somewhat interested at the time of the meeting and credits Apatow for saving him from going down that road.
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“I’m generally a weak-willed, weak-minded person,” he said. “If they got him, what chance do I got? Thank god Judd was like, ‘Ah, I think we’re good. Let’s just talk about movies.’ Oof, dodged that bullet.”
The Rogen-Apatow-Cruise project never did get off the ground, but that’s probably for the best, too.
*First Published: May 11, 2021, 2:02 pm
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