How Scientology Protected Tom Cruise and John Travolta – And Kicked Out Nicole Kidman

MRinder served as Senior Executive Director of the Church of Scientology from 1982 to 2007, both on the board of directors and as head of the Office of Special Affairs, where he articulated the public image of the religion-like faith. He often acted as the public face of Scientology, speaking to the media and putting out PR fires.

Since leaving Scientology in 2007, he has become one of the pioneers of Scientology in the world, appearing in the HBO documentary. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Beliefco-host of Emmy Award-winning A&E documentaries Leah Remini: Scientology and the Consequencesand is currently co-host of the Scientology podcast fair game (Also with Remini). his new notes, A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life at the Top of Scientologyreleased September 27 by Simon & Schuster, chronicles his time inside the shadowy organization, the alleged abuses he witnessed, and his dealings with its leader, David Miscavige.

In this exclusive excerpt from billion yearsRinder writes for the Scientology Network of Fame.

One thing Hubbard didn’t want to omit was his brushes with celebrities. He was fascinated by them, constantly dropping his name, claiming association and interaction with Hollywood characters especially even during his time as a writer of fantasy novels. This fascination with Scientology continued, as he began to see it as a way to gain publicity and acceptance. He even had a list of “targeted” celebrities to be lured to Scientology to help make it popular, and in the early 1970s he created the Celebrity Center – a Scientology organization dedicated to recruiting Hollywood celebrities. Miscavige also believes in the value of celebrities, and devotes a lot of time and attention to them. What was important to Miscavige became a priority for his followers. – Mike Render

My days were endless, packed with tracking down Scientology’s enemies, implementing programs to neutralize them, putting out fires online, and dealing with ongoing celebrity issues.

Perhaps the strangest celebrity encounter of mine was with Michael Jackson. She became Scientology’s favorite Lisa Marie Presley during her marriage to Jaco. Her mother, Priscilla, had become involved in Scientology when Lisa Marie was young, and so she was raised in the world of Scientology. She enlisted me in her efforts to convert Michael to Scientology, or at least to persuade him to accept it. I gave them both a private tour of the L. Ron Hubbard Life Gallery. Throughout the tour, Michael was extremely paranoid. He repeatedly dipped on the ground, grumbling that he saw someone taking pictures of himself through the windows, though there was no line of sight for any publicly accessible place. Lisa Marie laughed and explained that he was always worried about the paparazzi. He was so soft-spoken I could hardly hear him, his comments and questions were disjointed and childish. She told me she thought Michael understood her because he grew up in the media spotlight and didn’t really have a childhood, similar to her own experience when she was the King’s daughter. But it did not last – they broke up in 1996.

In March 1995 she traveled to Wichita, Kansas, to attend the grand opening of a Scientology special mission. Miscavige has been pushing hard on celebrities to become more active in promoting Scientology, and Kirstie Alley was the first to take the step of putting money into opening a mission in her hometown. After the mission holder’s fiasco in 1982, a few people boarded to unlock new missions, reducing the influx of new recruits into Scientology. Celebrities doing this will popularize the idea again. Alley was a longtime Scientologist who credited Scientology with treating her drug addiction. I became a star cheers He was a close friend of John Travolta, who was at the top of the Scientology celebrity heap before Tom Cruise, although his career was now on a downward trajectory by the time Cruise was heading into the stratosphere.

Throughout the tour, Michael [Jackson] He was very paranoid. He repeatedly dipped on the ground, grumbling that he saw someone taking pictures of himself through the windows, though there was no line of sight for any publicly accessible place.

In fact, Travolta drove us all on the Gulfstream from Los Angeles to Wichita. She sat across from his wife, Kelly Preston, and played cards with Isaac Hayes and Lisa Marie Presley in the back (they would later be persuaded to open an assignment in Memphis). Kelly amazed me when she told me that during her teenage years she lived in Adelaide, just a mile from where I lived, and attended the boys’ sister school where I spent many years.

Tom Cruise didn’t show up because he was shooting Mission: Impossible, but his presence in the orbit of Scientology is more looming than ever. He was the biggest star in the world, and Miscavige was using this to his advantage. Despite the IRS victory, the German government still refused to recognize Scientology, believing that the organization went against the country’s values ​​and constitution. The idea of ​​creating a world of supermen (Clears) and replacing wog law and government with Scientology principles approximates the grandeur of the previous major race and its “Deutschland über alles” thinking to their liking. The Miscavige wanted a campaign against Germany, based on Hubbard’s dictation to always attack: in this case, he claimed, the German government was persecuting Scientology just as the Nazis had persecuted Jews. I was instructed by Miscavige to get famed Hollywood attorney Burt Fields, who was Cruz’s attorney, to help. With Tom’s blessing, Burt has taken personally the cause of the supposed persecution of our religion in Germany. In January 1997, he purchased a full-page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune entitled “An Open Letter to Helmut Kohl”, signed by several of his clients and friends, including Goldie Hawn, Dustin Hoffmann, Oliver Stone and others, denouncing the German government’s actions against Scientology. The country held its own, but the attempt proved the strength of Tom Cruise’s star.

Tom Cruise speaks during the opening of the Church of Scientology in Madrid, Spain, on September 18, 2004.

Pierre-Philippe Marcot/AFP/Getty

With Tom as Miscavige’s most important asset, the actor’s concerns became those of Scientology. When Cruz learned of an unauthorized biography of British author Winsley Clarkson, Miscavige told Cruz, “I’ll take care of this for you.” I was sent to London with in-house Scientology attorney Bill Drescher to deal with the publisher and make sure nothing negative appeared in the book. Yes, the church’s attorney and the head of the Office of Special Affairs were acting on behalf of Tom Cruise, which the Church of Scientology paid for. With so many persistent and hidden threats, the publisher convinced us to let us “check and correct” anything Scientology-related in the manuscript. We went to the offices of Blake Publishing in West London and collected a copy of the manuscript from the editor. We took it back to our Savoy room and spent two days cleaning it of anything negative in exchange for a promise not to sue. In truth, the book did not reveal anything new, but it contained some of what we considered the usual “mistakes” about Scientology – we call the E-scale a lie detector and they say that Scientologists believe in aliens and they cost a lot of money. In the general scheme of things, had we done nothing for the manuscript, it wouldn’t have made a difference to Scientology or Cruise, but it was another feather in the “see what I can do for you” cover of Miscavige with Cruise.

In 1997, cracks began to appear in the relationship between Cruise and Miscavige during the filming of the Stanley Kubrick movie. closed eyes. Costars Tom and Nicole were effectively cut off from the world for a year as the infamous perfectionist Kubrick demanded a reshoot after reshooting on the very closed set in London. The loss of daily interaction with Miscavige and his time with Nicole had an effect on Tom. He wasn’t checking in with Dave or even answering his calls. Miscavige, worried that Nicole was pulling Tom out of Scientology, sent me to London to meet Tom’s sister Lee Anne at the Dorchester Hotel to try to find out what was going on. Lee Ann, the dedicated Scientologist who is following in her brother’s footsteps (he got his three sisters and his mother), claimed that everything was fine and they were just busy, but Miscavige didn’t buy it.

Kelly Preston, John Travolta, and Priscilla Presley attend the 42nd Anniversary Celebration of the Church of Scientology Fame Center held at the Church of Scientology Fame Center on August 6, 2011, in Hollywood, California.

Ray Catchaturian/Getty Images

Nobody gives up, Miscavige tasked Marty Rathbone with getting Cruz back into the fold. Rathbun began auditing Cruise under Miscavige’s direct supervision. As Cruise gradually returned to the world of Scientology, he rededicated himself to the cause. This created a distance between him and Nicole. Rathbun worked with Bert Fields to hire famous PI Anthony Pellicano to spy on Nicole and tap her phones. Rathbone also turned their two adopted children, Isabella and Connor, against Nicole by teaching them Hubbard’s teachings to oppressive people. When Tom and Nicole broke up, Miscavige was glad that Nicole’s “negative influence” was no longer dragging Tom away. Cruz then became more fervent in his overt public support for Scientology – and Miscavige.

While Marty was dealing with Cruz, I was assigned the task of helping John Travolta with some PR issues. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Travolta has been haunted by stories from various alleged male lovers, including one of his former pilots as well as a porn star. I met John and his attorney, Jay Lovely, for help navigating these landmines. The The National Enquirer Contact Travolta and the church for responses. Realizing the potential public relations damage a same-sex story could do to idealistic Scientology couple John and Kelly, we dug up dirt on the sources of the stories and threatened the media with lawsuits. The stories were closed, and I became a trusted person in John’s life. Similar claims have continued to emerge over the years and have been rejected by Travolta or closed down. LGBT claims are Scientology’s landmines. Scientology publicly claims it is not homophobic (despite Hubbard’s writings suggesting otherwise), however the threat from a story describing a Scientologist as gay would cause panic internally because for a Scientologist, the lack of “cure” of homosexuality Indicates that the technology is not working.

When appropriate, our public statements were “we do not interfere in commenting on the personal lives of our parishioners, celebrities, or otherwise.” In fact, we have been very involved in all aspects of their private lives. This was not intended for the two VIPs, Cruz and Travolta. Kirstie Alley and her husband, actor Parker Stevenson, were brought to Int Base to “dissolve their marriage”, although Miscavige had no interest in them personally – Kirstie was past her Hollywood heyday. I was the designated companion to the couple while they were receiving Marriage Counseling. I joined them for meals every day for the week or so they were there and engaged them in a short conversation. They ate in the small bar/cafe in the building that had been converted, theme park style, to look like an old four-column mowing ship, next to the large swimming pool dedicated to Miscavige and his guests. Despite the circumstances, Kirstie was an entertaining companion while eating—outrageous, funny, and sometimes inappropriately disgusting. Parker was a very nice guy whose only obvious flaw was his lack of interest in Scientology. We didn’t talk about their marriage at all; It was forbidden. But I can tell that Kirsty decided she had no future with Parker and so the outcome was inevitable: a divorce. Parker was not “interested” in Scientology. And for the organization, that was all that mattered.

Adapted from A BILLION YEARS by Mike Rinder. Copyright © 2022 by Michael Rinder. Reprinted with permission from Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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