Almost 20 years after Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got married, Jenny McCarthy shared a memory from their wedding celebrations that she says still stands out for all the wrong reasons. The actress and television host recalled an unsettling moment at the couple’s rehearsal dinner when she asked to hold their daughter, Suri, and claimed the room suddenly went silent. McCarthy also alleged that Cruise tried to bring her into Scientology. She shared the details during a conversation with former Scientologist Anne Gollert Hill on the podcast, ‘The Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg Show’.
Jenny McCarthy says the room went silent when she asked to hold Suri
McCarthy attended Cruise and Holmes’ wedding celebrations in Italy in November 2006 with her then-boyfriend, Jim Carrey. Recalling the rehearsal dinner, she told Hill that she and Carrey were seated directly across from the couple and their “immediate circle”.Holmes had recently welcomed her daughter, Suri, and McCarthy remembered seeing a nanny bring the baby over to her mother. Being someone who loves babies, she asked a seemingly ordinary question: could she hold her?What happened next, according to McCarthy, was anything but ordinary. “I went over there. I go, can I hold the baby? The entire party went like this,” she recalled, describing how everyone appeared to turn towards her at once. McCarthy compared the atmosphere to ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, adding, “I got the Scientology stare.”She said the room remained quiet while she held Suri. The conversations only resumed after she returned the baby to Holmes. “I thought to myself, OK, I am in the belly of the beast right now,” McCarthy said.The moment clearly stayed with her. However, her account reflects her personal recollection of the dinner and does not independently establish why the guests reacted as she described.
Tom Cruise allegedly tried to bring Jenny McCarthy into Scientology
The baby incident was not the only memory McCarthy shared. During the same conversation, she claimed that Cruise had tried to recruit her into Scientology. “He tried to bring me into Scientology,” she said.McCarthy also recalled being introduced to David Miscavige, the organisation’s leader, who served as Cruise’s best man at the wedding. She said she jokingly congratulated him with the words, “Haha, you got picked, congratulations.”The joke, she recalled, did not go down well. “He did not like that,” McCarthy said, describing Miscavige’s reaction.She also remembered a lengthy speech by Miscavige about Cruise and Holmes becoming an exceptionally powerful celebrity couple. According to McCarthy, Holmes appeared to be smiling through the speech, while members of her family seemed confused by parts of it.McCarthy further claimed that Cruise had invited her and Carrey to spend time at his home in Aspen, Colorado. Carrey declined the invitations, she said, because he suspected they were connected to attempts to recruit them into Scientology.
Jenny McCarthy says she later checked on Katie Holmes
McCarthy said she and Carrey continued spending time with Cruise and Holmes after the wedding. During one of those interactions, she recalled privately asking Holmes, “You good, girl? Do you need any help?”Looking back, McCarthy said Holmes seemed different as the marriage progressed, describing her as looking like “a deer in headlights”. She distinguished that impression from how Holmes appeared at the wedding itself, when she still seemed like herself.Cruise and Holmes married in November 2006, but Holmes filed for divorce in June 2012. McCarthy’s recollections offer her perspective on a celebrity wedding that attracted enormous attention at the time. They do not, however, establish what Holmes was privately experiencing or explain the couple’s eventual separation.