Brooke Shields, who had a famously on-off friendship with Tom Cruise, recalled in an interview this week how she was on on “the list” to receive the $126 white chocolate coconut bundt cake he’s been known to send friends during the Christmas holidays.
But in an otherwise lighthearted chat with People about how she somehow fell off Cruise’s Christmas cake list, Shields also mentioned how the actor’s holiday card noticeably dropped mention of his ex-wife Katie Holmes and his daughter, Suri, sometime after Holmes divorced him in 2012 and reportedly retained full custody of Suri.
In saying that Cruise stopped including Suri in his Christmas card, Shields brought up a painful subject for the “Top Gun” star — that he is reportedly estranged from his 16-year-old daughter. Every once in a while, a publication will report on how Cruise has distanced himself from his daughter and has no role in her life, due to Holmes allegedly leaving him, because she didn’t want their daughter raised in the controversial Church of Scientology.
In February, producer and director Judd Apatow roasted Cruise about his Scientology beliefs and his relationship with his daughter at the Directors Guild of America Awards, showing that he and others in Hollywood have apparently become less afraid to publicly criticize the actor or the controversial, cult-like organization.
Shields apparently did not mean to criticize Cruise in her interview with People, which was published Monday, but to engage in a fun conversation about loving the actor’s Christmas cake. She told People she doesn’t know “what happened” with the cake, which is made by Doan’s Bakery in Woodland Hills.
“I was on the list for a while. I had a good 10-year run, and I got the coconut cake every year, which I was very happy (about),” Shields told People while promoting her two-part Hulu documentary, “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.”
Initially, she said the cake was a gift from Cruise, as well as from his then-wife Holmes and their daughter, Suri.
“It was from them and Suri, so it was the three of them, and then soon it was no Suri and no Katie and just Tom,” Shields said. “Then it went from just Tom for a while, but not every holiday. And then the cake stopped.”
Shields indicated that the cake delivery wasn’t halted because of the public dispute she and Cruise had in 2005. That’s when the “War of the Worlds” actor criticized her on the “Today” show for taking antidepressants for postpartum depression after the birth of her first child, Rowan, now 19.
Shields responded to the criticism by writing an op-ed for the New York Times. She wrote: , “While Mr. Cruise says that (Matt) Lauer and I do not ‘understand the history of psychiatry,’ I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression.”
Cruise and Shields eventually patched things up, to the extent that Cruise and Holmes invited her to their lavish 2006 wedding in an Italian castle.
“I was like ‘Hell, yes, (I’m) going.’ It was extraordinary,” Shields told People. She also said that she, Cruise and Holmes hosted a joint first birthday party for their children; Shield’s second daughter, Grier, and Suri Cruise were born in the same hospital on the same day.
Shields said she’d love to get back on Cruise’s Christmas cake list — something that might not happen now, since she inadvertently reminded the public of his reported estrangement from his daughter.
A recent Page Six report said that Cruise is no longer part of his daughter’s life. A source told Page Six that the “Mission: Impossible” star has not seen the girl in “a very long time.” Representatives for Cruise did did not immediately return Page Six’s request for comment.
In a deposition for a 2012 defamation lawsuit that Cruise filed against Life & Style, after the magazine said he had “abandoned” Suri, the actor admitted that he stopped seeing his daughter regularly after Holmes filed for divorce, Page Six reported.
“Listen, when there is a divorce … things change,” Cruise told lawyers in 2013. “It’s not an ideal scene. It’s not an ideal situation.”
In his deposition for the case, which was ultimately settled, Cruise also admitted that his ties to Scientology played a role in why he was estranged from his daughter, ABC News also reported.
When asked whether Holmes had left him “in part to protect Suri from Scientology,” Tom responded at the time, “That was one of the assertions, yes.”
Page Six and other outlets have reported over the years that Cruise may have felt the need to distance himself from his daughter, because Scientology reportedly discourages members from associating with nonbelievers.
Because neither neither Suri nor Holmes were Scientologists, Tom reportedly could not have a relationship with either one, Page Six reported in 2016. “This is his loss, his issue, his problem,” a source told Page Six at the time. “He must be really brainwashed.”