Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - Tom's Biggest Nightmare !!

00:00:00.000 now that his movie is predicted to bomb at the box office, did Tom Cruise open a can of worms

00:00:06.840 for nothing? Hi and welcome to Flossom Talk, I'm Serge Tiflor, journalist, Hollywood truth teller,

00:00:16.960 and your voice of reason in a town built on the illusion. Okay, so I decided to do another video

00:00:23.360 of Tom Cruise after watching him at his UK premiere of his latest movie Digger where he's

00:00:30.580 appearing alongside Kate Middleton and Prince William and David Beckham and as I spoke about

00:00:37.920 recently in my other episodes about Tom Cruise he's put himself in a very vulnerable position

00:00:43.720 right now because I can't think of any other movie star out there with more skeletons in the

00:00:49.800 closet than Tom Cruise. And as his Oscar campaign for his role in this movie is in full swing,

00:00:57.600 Tom's past started hunting him again. Apart from all the Scientology stuff, Tom has been fighting

00:01:04.340 with the press for decades. Let's look at how many hundred million dollar losses Tom Cruise has

00:01:11.780 filed to get on top of the gay rumors and how he tried to cover up the past and rehabilitate his 1.00

00:01:19.780 image by selling us this guy who's willing to kill himself to entertain us. Now that his movie 0.79

00:01:26.800 is predicted to bomb at the box office, did Tom Cruise open a can of worms for nothing? But before

00:01:34.260 we get into all the lawsuits that Tom Cruise filed to defend himself against these rumors,

00:01:38.740 we have to look at how Scientology looks at homosexuality. In Dianetics and Science of 0.58

00:01:46.720 Survival by Ron Hubbard, he described homosexuality as a perversion or psychological disturbance

00:01:56.400 and treated it as something that needed to be corrected. So please keep that in mind.

00:02:03.700 Tom Cruise said that he was introduced to Scientology by Mimi Rogers, who he was married

00:02:10.080 to in 1987. She introduced him to the church in 1986, and he did discuss these things publicly

00:02:19.680 by 1992. Thank you, Mario, by the way, for sending me some of these articles that I had not seen

00:02:25.580 before. Anyways, let's look at some of these lawsuits. In 1998, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

00:02:33.140 filed a lawsuit against the British newspaper The Express on Sunday. It concerned an article

00:02:38.800 published in October 1997 that portrayed their marriage as a sham or business arrangements to

00:02:45.440 conceal the sexuality one or both of them. It also made claims about Cruise's fertility and

00:02:51.900 their reasons for adopting their children. This lawsuit was settled in 1998 and the newspaper

00:02:59.640 had to publicly apologize to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and they also paid them some damages. That

00:03:08.560 has been undisclosed. Then in 2001, there was another lawsuit. Someone called Chad Slater

00:03:14.520 claimed in the French magazine Act to Star that he had had an affair with Tom Cruise and that that

00:03:22.600 affair contributed to Tom and Nicole's divorce. Tom Cruise filed a hundred million dollar defamation

00:03:29.380 lawsuit against Slater and that ended up with a settlement where Slater said that he had never

00:03:36.420 met Tom Cruise and the allegations were false. Then also in 2001 a publisher claimed that he

00:03:43.200 had an intimate videotape of Tom Cruise with another man. Tom Cruise sued again for 100 million

00:03:50.620 dollar and the publisher subsequently retracted the claim acknowledging that Cruise was not the

00:03:58.140 person on the tape and Cruise dropped the suit. I found that story particularly interesting because

00:04:04.100 If it wasn't Tom Cruise in that video, why would he even bother to sue?

00:04:09.740 He would should just say, just release it.

00:04:11.420 It's not me in that video, whatever.

00:04:13.620 But anyways, in a certain way, the publisher said that it wasn't Tom Cruise in the tape.

00:04:18.220 I was also wondering how this publisher, if it wasn't Tom Cruise on the tape,

00:04:22.160 how he was planning to move this forward with just all these false claims.

00:04:27.860 And the Esquire magazine went hard.

00:04:30.660 they published so many stories on Tom Cruise and photos of him they were alleging were from a gay

00:04:39.360 magazine and saying that he was living a secret life. The rumors around Tom Cruise were exploding

00:04:46.520 and he was freaking out. Anyways, then again, thanks to Mario for sending me this video clip

00:04:53.700 of Colin Farrell doing an interview in 2002

00:04:57.340 when he's basically asked if he thinks Tom Cruise is gay.

00:05:02.440 I find this so fascinating that journalists

00:05:05.740 were able to ask these questions back then

00:05:08.140 without being reprimanded, just ask straight out,

00:05:11.640 is Tom Cruise gay?

00:05:12.980 And Colin Farrell's answer is priceless.

00:05:17.680 What about Tom Cruise, gay or straight?

00:05:19.620 Straight. 1.00

00:05:20.800 I knew it was gay there.

00:05:22.180 Gay or straight. 0.95

00:05:22.940 why? I just think he is 1.00

00:05:25.860 no one has a perfect gaydar

00:05:28.460 but I have a pretty good one

00:05:31.340 and I just think

00:05:32.860 I've met gay guys 1.00

00:05:35.280 who are more butch than him 1.00

00:05:36.600 but I definitely think he's straight 1.00

00:05:41.140 I've said that

00:05:42.860 today a couple of times

00:05:44.140 you're the first person to ask me

00:05:45.740 which I'm not surprised by this whole interview

00:05:48.460 that you would ask me that question

00:05:49.500 but yeah, definitely straight

00:05:52.940 I don't know, analyze that video however you want to.

00:05:56.700 But when this video resurfaced again, people were like, okay, really?

00:06:00.820 And then we have this article from 16 years ago.

00:06:04.840 This is from The Guardian, by the way,

00:06:06.820 where one of Tom Cruise's co-stars from Risky Business

00:06:12.140 is talking about what it was like to work with Tom Cruise.

00:06:16.900 And the headline of this article is Tom Cruise homophobia by his co-star.

00:06:22.940 So The Guardian is referring to a DVD that was released

00:06:27.540 where Bronson Pinshot is discussing Tom Cruise.

00:06:32.280 And here is what he said on this DVD.

00:06:36.320 He said, we didn't know it was going to be a big hit,

00:06:39.400 talking about risky business.

00:06:40.720 We thought Tom Cruise was the biggest bore on the face of the earth.

00:06:45.020 He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn.

00:06:47.900 We were all very young at the time.

00:06:49.720 Tom was 20.

00:06:50.580 I was 23.

00:06:51.280 Tom had picked up his knack of calling everyone by their character names

00:06:55.700 because that would probably make your performance better

00:06:58.320 and I don't agree with that.

00:07:01.420 I think that acting is acting and the rest of the time you should be you

00:07:04.700 but he called us all by our character names.

00:07:07.800 He was tense and made constant, constant, unrelated homophobic comments 0.71

00:07:13.220 like, you want some ice cream in case there are no gay people here?

00:07:17.400 I mean his lingo was larded with the most there was no basis for it it was like it's a nice day 1.00

00:07:24.680 I'm glad there are no gay people standing here very very strange and then he continued years 1.00

00:07:31.180 and years later when people started to torment him with that I used to think god that's really 1.00

00:07:36.460 fitting because he tormented a lot of people as a 20 year old he made such a big deal about it

00:07:42.780 Same thing with Eddie Murphy. I remember somebody calling and saying, you'll never guess who got

00:07:48.220 caught with a transvestite. And I remember thinking that seemed fitting because there 1.00

00:07:54.220 are certain people in showbiz who made it an agenda. Every third sentence has to have something

00:07:59.940 knocking that life choice. And you think, what are you doing? I just thought it was very funny

00:08:06.820 that years later that became his boogaboo which is a nice 1930s term I thought you'd enjoy. Anyways

00:08:14.220 if I'm going to put in my personal opinion here I find it very strategically unwise to go after

00:08:21.900 all these people calling Tom Cruise gay or threatening to expose him in any way because

00:08:29.980 there is something called the Streisand effect and I believe if you just leave something alone

00:08:36.260 it will die out. But when you go after people with $100 million lawsuits, people start paying

00:08:42.280 attention to it. Then, of course, we have this infamous South Park episode. It's me, Tom Cruise!

00:08:50.520 Where they're mocking Scientology and Tom Cruise and John Travolta goes into a closet together

00:08:59.440 and they refuse to come out of the closet. And this entire episode is about trying to get them

00:09:05.960 out of the closet. We're still not exactly sure why Tom Cruise is in the closet. It was called

00:09:12.140 Trapped in the Closet and it aired in November of 2005. And when Comedy Central were planning

00:09:19.200 to do a rerun of this in March of 2006, industry sources told Reuters at the time that Cruise had

00:09:29.640 threatened to stop promoting Mission Impossible 3 if the rerun aired. Cruise representatives and

00:09:37.380 Paramount denied that account. So this is just alleged that there were threats. And the episode

00:09:44.440 ended up not rerunning in March of 2006, but it did rerun in July of 2006. So it was a few months

00:09:54.740 delayed there. There were no lawsuits or anything filed in regards to that but now as you know that

00:10:00.720 episode is living on forever on YouTube. Anyways these are just the lawsuits and legal threats

00:10:07.940 in regards to Tom Cruise's sexuality. So in 1996 Tom Cruise sued a German weekly magazine for 60

00:10:17.200 million dollars over an interview containing a false claim about his fertility. As you know

00:10:24.580 him and Nicole Kidman did not have any biological children together. When they actually separated

00:10:31.320 and found new partners, they both got biological children. We don't know why they decided to adopt.

00:10:37.600 I don't think they ever came out and talked about that. But anyways, it says here that Tom Cruise

00:10:43.220 withdrew the suit after the magazine admitted much of the interview was fabricated and retracted it.

00:10:49.900 Then, in 1999, another lawsuit against the magazine Star.

00:10:55.400 This time, it was Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman together who sued the magazine

00:11:00.000 for alleging that they needed a sex therapist to film Eyes Wide Shots.

00:11:05.980 As you remember, that movie was very raunchy and the two of them played a couple

00:11:11.040 and they were also together in real life.

00:11:13.380 It says here that it is confirmed that the suit was filed,

00:11:16.280 but it's not been verified what the final outcome of that lawsuit was.

00:11:20.680 So I'm not sure what happened at the end there.

00:11:23.120 Then in 2012, Tom Cruise sued again.

00:11:26.660 Then he sued the publisher of In Touch and Life & Style magazine

00:11:31.020 for $50 million over claims he had abandoned his daughter, Suri.

00:11:36.880 And apparently, one year later, the parties reached a confidential settlement.

00:11:42.120 From all the reports that we have now,

00:11:44.100 It doesn't seem like Tom Cruise has any contact with his daughter, Suri, as he's not talking about it, obviously, not because any journalists have been asked not to ask these questions, not at all.

00:11:56.760 As we got confirmed when that GQ journalist was interviewed the other day, you have to watch my video about that, by the way.

00:12:03.060 It was hilarious. He said, oh, I could ask Tom Cruise everything I wanted.

00:12:06.760 It was no restrictions.

00:12:08.180 I just thought that people wouldn't be interested in Scientology

00:12:11.960 or why he doesn't have any relationship with his daughter.

00:12:16.280 Anyways, there's another really interesting story that was published in 2017

00:12:20.680 from when Tom Cruise did Risky Business, another one of his co-star.

00:12:26.460 This story came from Curtis Armstrong.

00:12:29.600 And The Hollywood Reporter printed an excerpt from that book

00:12:33.760 a book where he talks about how Tom Cruise allegedly was dating his co-star at the time

00:12:39.720 Rebecca De Morney. I had never met him before and I remember walking over to him and saying

00:12:45.260 okay you know what this is this is the chemistry test so uh let's get some chemistry going.

00:12:55.180 He also said that in one occasion they were asking Tom Cruise if he wanted to join them 0.89

00:13:01.540 for drinks and Tom Cruise said no I'm gonna go up and read the bible at this time he was a Christian

00:13:07.560 and then Curtis Armstrong was passing Tom Cruise's hotel room on the way back to his room

00:13:14.400 and there were girls lined up outside of Tom Cruise's room according to Curtis Armstrong and

00:13:21.280 as he was standing there the door opened and a girl exited Tom Cruise's room and another one

00:13:28.060 entered. Anyways, I'm sure there are more crazy stories like this out there. And after Tom Cruise

00:13:33.100 did Risky Business, his career really took off. And you know, he did amazing movies. He's a great

00:13:39.280 actor. He did Born of Fourth of July, Magnolia, Jerry Maguire, Rain Man, A Few Good Men, lots and

00:13:47.080 lots of good movies. And as his career took off more and more, the press got more and more interested

00:13:53.500 in him and Tom Cruise started becoming really protective of his personal life. All he's been

00:13:59.940 talking about for the last 20 years is how he's been doing his own stunts and how he put his life

00:14:05.640 at risk and Hollywood was really excited with him and some even claim that he single-handedly

00:14:11.160 saved the movie theaters because people wanted to go into a theater and see Tom Cruise doing his

00:14:18.000 own stunts. But now things have changed. Tom Cruise put himself in a very vulnerable position.

00:14:26.160 Now he's out there wanting an Oscar and that means he has to be out there rallying for that Oscar

00:14:33.080 for months. I've spoken to actors who say that they spend twice as much time campaigning for an

00:14:39.760 Oscar as it usually takes them to make a movie. And the more interviews you do, the more questions

00:14:46.340 people will ask. As I've spoken about here on my channel a few times already, that GQ article and

00:14:51.680 the interview that is uploaded on YouTube as well made things even worse for Tom Cruise. It's

00:14:58.060 interesting how an interview that tells you absolutely nothing about Tom Cruise becomes

00:15:02.960 the controversy itself. And it's too obvious for everyone what Tom Cruise's plan is here. As I said

00:15:10.640 before as well now it's all about his friendship with taylor swift that photo was everywhere he

00:15:16.940 talks about that in every single interview that he's doing right now and on top of that of course

00:15:22.340 he talks about how much he loves making movies and when i'm not doing one movie i'm thinking about

00:15:26.400 the same next movie blah blah blah and he talks about the fat suit he's wearing and the prosthetics

00:15:31.300 and that's it and this weekend as well at the uk premiere he also got kate middleton and prince

00:15:38.700 William to show up he was holding Kate Middleton's hand at one point and David Beckham was there as

00:15:45.780 well and this photo of the two of them together I'm like I don't know what that is all about we

00:15:51.440 know that they're friends and there were rumors that David Beckham was a part of Scientology as

00:15:57.260 well for a while but can all of these celebrity friends and royals save Tom Cruise from all the

00:16:04.500 scrutiny? I don't think so. It was so funny how Radar Online was explaining this in an article a

00:16:11.580 few days ago, where they said the 64-year-old Hollywood star unveiled red hair and height-boosting

00:16:19.280 shoes while joining Prince William and Kate Middleton at the movie London premiere. And going

00:16:25.900 back to that cover and how Tom Cruise appeared at this premiere with high heels and a new color on

00:16:32.280 is here he really wants to appear young and I think that he believes himself because Tom Cruise

00:16:38.420 has a big ego let's face it that people find him sexy somehow and I really haven't seen anyone

00:16:45.440 who's thought that cover was anything but just I think that Tom Cruise has totally underestimated

00:16:56.600 the public he believes that he can just be Tom Cruise the movie star and he just needs to remind

00:17:02.940 everyone why people love Tom Cruise the movie star without asking any questions and that used to work

00:17:10.080 when what he was doing was hanging from planes and talking about how he was risking his life

00:17:15.700 every day on a movie set to just entertain you but with this movie playing a regular guy

00:17:22.800 he can't get away with it. On top of all of this his movie is getting really mixed reviews and a

00:17:31.080 lot of people online are predicting that it will be a huge bomb. I think the time has passed where

00:17:38.460 we as the public or as the audience is protecting movie stars like Tom Cruise. Before we used to

00:17:45.080 accept the fact that some people could just be movie stars before they were human beings and

00:17:51.860 the audience tolerated a lot more back then. So that is the big question. Will people and Hollywood

00:17:57.720 still protect Tom Cruise even if we don't like his movie? Will it be enough just to surround

00:18:04.160 yourself with celebrities that are bigger than you? People like Taylor Swift and the royal family

00:18:10.100 in the UK? Well time will show. Digger is in theater on October 2nd in the US so we'll soon

00:18:17.640 learn if this movie will be a success at the box office or not. And if it's not, what is Tom Cruise

00:18:25.640 going to do? Anyways, that's it for me today, you guys. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks for

00:18:32.320 all your support. Thanks for all the tips you're sending me. If you have something you want to

00:18:36.180 share with me, please send it to tips at flawsometalk.com or just DM me on Instagram as well.

00:18:42.360 I'm sorry my dog Oscar my executive producer is out today he's really busy doing other stuff

00:18:49.240 like peeing on 500 trees in the neighborhood but anyways that's it for me if you haven't

00:18:55.600 subscribed yet please do and hit the notification bell as well so you never miss an episode of

00:19:01.100 Flossom Talk and I'll see you soon

00:19:12.360 Amen.

Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - October 01, 2026

Tom's Biggest Nightmare !!

Episode Stats

Transcript