- In "
Yearbook ," Rogen says Cruise talked to him about jumping on Oprah's couch during an interview. - Cruise said "Big Pharma" made him look like "I'm losing my mind" on "Oprah," according to Rogen.
- Rogen said Cruise also blamed the media for "distorting" what Scientology really is.
In the just-released book, Rogen said that during the making of Apatow's "Knocked Up," which Rogen starred in, they were invited to Cruise's house for a meeting because the superstar was looking to act in a comedy.
Rogen recounts how during the five-hour meeting they chatted about the industry and the
"It was all totally normal …until …it wasn't," Rogen wrote in "Yearbook."
The comic said that four hours into the meeting, the conversation slowly went into how Cruise was negatively perceived by the public at that time.
Back then, Cruise's media attention was at an all-time high thanks to his relationship with Katie Holmes. During one famous interview with Oprah Winfrey on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which eventually went off the air in 2011, Cruise jumped on the host's couch to profess his love for Holmes, birthing the "TomKat" phenomenon. (Rogen wrote in his book that when he got to Cruise's house in 2006, he also met Holmes: "She had a vague 'please rescue me from this place' look on her face.")
"Well, yeah, they're making it seem like I'm losing my mind," Cruise said of all the attention, according to Rogen. "There's a coordinated effort to make it appear that way."
"Who would do that?" Rogen recalled asking.
"The pharmaceutical industry," Cruise replied, according to Rogen. "Because my exposure of their fraud has cost them SO much money that they're desperate. They're scrambling and they're doing everything they can to discredit me so I won't hurt sales anymore."
To understand why Cruise would accuse the pharmaceutical industry of wanting to harm his public perception, we need to travel back to 2005 when Cruise caused controversy for speaking out about his views on prescription drugs (Scientology, the religion Cruise follows, condemns "mind-altering medicine").
In 2005, Cruise appeared on "Access Hollywood" and called Brooke Shields "irresponsible" when she said she took antidepressants to battle postpartum depression (Shields revealed in 2016 that Cruise later apologized to her). In the same year, Cruise and "Today" host Matt Lauer got into a heated exchange when Lauer said he knew people who were helped by antidepressants. At one point Cruise said to Lauer: "Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?"
"Big Pharma made you jump on Oprah's couch?" Rogen said he asked Cruise at the 2006 meeting.
"They edited it to make it look so much worse than it was," Cruise responded, according to Rogen. "They do that all the time. You should see what they do to my friend Louis Farrakhan!"
"Of all the strange sentences I've heard in my life, this one coming out of Tom Cruise's mouth is in the top three," Rogen wrote in "Yearbook" when he heard Cruise name drop Farrakhan.
Rogen wrote that Apatow then jumped in to talk about Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam who has given anti-Semitic comments in the past. Here was the exchange, according to "Yearbook":
Apatow: Well, Farrakhan has said a lot of blatantly anti-Semitic things.
Cruise: No! He's great!
Apatow: He's great? He's compared Jews to cockroaches.
Cruise: No! See, that's the media! They're distorting all of it! Take my religion, for example-Scientology. They make it seem sooooo f---ing different than it is! If you just gave me like an hour to tell you about it, you'd be like, "No f---ing way?! That's what Scientology is?! No f---ing way!!" In just one hour, I could completely change your minds!
Rogen wrote that he and Apatow looked at each other following Cruise's offer to talk to them about Scientology and Apatow responded to Cruise: "Yeah... maybe another time."
Insider contacted Cruise's rep for comment on Rogen's recollections but did not get an immediate response. Insider also contacted Apatow's rep and Farrakhan for comment but didn't get an immediate response.
Rogen, Apatow, and Cruise never worked together, but Cruise did get to do his comedy. He went on to play the vile studio boss Les Grossman in Ben Stiller's 2008 satirical comedy "Tropic Thunder."