Tom Cruise Explains Why He’s Taken 24-Hour Trips for Scientology and Not for Suri, in Leaked Deposition Papers

by James Devaney/WireImage.

Last October, Tom Cruise filed a $50 million lawsuit against Life & Style and In Touch magazines for suggesting that he abandoned his then six-year-old daughter Suri after his divorce from Katie Holmes, which was finalized in July 2012. At the time, Cruise’s legal team alleged that the magazines “demonstrated that they have no interest in the truth, and will stop at nothing to push [their] sales.”

According to legal paperwork leaked to Radar, the lawsuit was apparently still in progress in September of this year, when Cruise taped a video deposition in Los Angeles. Questioned by New York–based attorney Elizabeth McNamara, who represented the defendants (and who has represented Vanity Fair’s parent company, Condé Nast, in the past), Cruise provides some insight into his relationship with his daughter, the changes caused by divorce, and why on one occasion he chose to fly around the world for a Scientology event, when he did not make the same effort for his daughter at the time. (Bolding is ours, for easier reading.)

An excerpt from the document, about a trip Cruise took while filming Jack Reacher in Pittsburgh:

Q: And then the next day, on October 15th, you were in London?

A: Yes.

Q: And it says you were at an IAS event.

A. Uh-huh.

Q: What is that?

A. That’s an International Association of Scientology. It’s an international event that we have for our Church.

Q: And were you speaking at that event?

A: No, I was not.

Q: So you were just attending?

A: Yes.


A: Yes.

Q: Do you see that?

A: Yes, I do.


A: No, they did not.

Q: And you believed it was important that you attended that event, didn’t you?

A: Yes.

Q: Why was it important to you?

A: It was an important event. I felt it was important.

Q: It’s an annual event?

A: Yes, it is.

Q: Is it more than once—do they have such events more than once a year?

A: That is an international annual event, yes.

Q: But based upon this, you could fly from the East Coast to London for 24 hours; is that right?

A: In that situation, yes.

Q: And you did that for the Church event—

A: Yes.

Q: —did you not? But you didn’t do it for Suri; isn’t that right?

A: When did I not do it for Suri?

Q: In July, August, September, October.

A: That’s not true.

Q: You didn’t—

A: In July I did fly to see my daughter.


A: Different situation.



Q: And you were in part responsible for that absence, weren’t you?

A: No.

Q: In no way?

A: No.

Q: You couldn’t have—you were unable to fly for 24 hours from London to New York?

A: Yes.

Q: And why were you unable, Mr. Cruise?


Other revelations made during the deposition:

  • Between the period of June 18 and Thanksgiving in 2012, Cruise says, he only saw Suri for about 10 days.
  • Cruise recalls flying commercially only once in the last three or four years, from Dubai to Los Angeles.
  • Suri did not ask her dad to be there for her on her first day of school. If she had, Cruise says, he would have made it happen.
  • Tom Cruise has worked hard on developing a phone relationship with his young daughter. “You have to work at it,” Cruise tells the interrogator. “I’ve gotten very good at it. I’ve gotten very good at it. I tell wonderful stories and they like hearing it.”
  • Tom sees no similarity between himself and his absent father. “My father didn’t pay money. He didn’t call.”
