you’ll never guess why Katie Holmes is divorcing Tom Cruise

It would be easy to paint Scientology as some scary cult that has given Katie Holmes no choice but to divorce Tom Cruise, and that’s because Scientology is a scary cult that has given Katie Holmes no choice but to divorce Tom Cruise.

So here’s a timeline explaining how we got here, and it’s kinda long but don’t skip to the end without paying me or else you’ll die of pneumonia (I’m just like Scientology).

February, 2004: This was after ‘Dawsons Creek’ but before ‘Batman Begins’, when Katie was still sort of famous and still very close to her family (all devout Catholics) back in Ohio. She was also single (foreshadowing).

March, 2004: Tom Cruise had been dating Penelope Cruz for the past 3 years but was single at the time, so a friend of his named David (who happens to be the leader of the Church of Scientology) came up with a plan; Step 1 was to name some famous girls. Step 2 was to rank how fuckable they were.

Now if you’re 14 or retarded or Maxim, that would be the entire plan. David on the other hand added Step 3, which was to have church employees set up auditions for a fake movie and trick those girls into dates with Tom Cruise.

The top 3 names, in order, were Jennifer Garner, Scarlett Johansson, and Jessica Alba. Kate Bosworth and Katie Holmes would be added later because a few weird voice mails scared off Garner, and Alba never bought the whole fake-audition thing. Tom was 0-2. Would things ever turn around?

April, 2004: Oh hey look, Scarlett Johansson got cast as the female lead in ‘Mission: Impossible 3’. What a coincidence, we were just talking about her.

February, 2005: I don’t understand it either but around this time Cruise briefly dated Sofia Vergara.

May, 2005: Cruise arranged a private dinner with Johansson at the Scientology center in Hollywood to discuss ‘Mission: Impossible’. Playing it cool, Mr. Smooth took this opportunity to push his sci-fi religion on her. Scarlett wisely ran away in horror, as fast as her little legs would carry her, then quickly decided she didn’t want to be in ‘Mission: Impossible 3’ anymore. She has yet to ever work with Cruise.

April 11, 2005: Under the impression that she’s auditioning for a movie, Katie Holmes (number 5 on the list) goes to his office in West Hollywood and meets Tom Cruise for the first time.

At this point “weird” becomes “ominous” because Katie then disappeared for 16 days, during which she fired her longtime agent and manager for no apparent reason and her family and friends couldn’t reach her.

April 27, 2005: Oh never mind there she is. In Rome. With her boyfriend Tom Cruise.

May 23, 2005: Cruise went on Oprah Winfrey to promote ‘War of the Worlds’, but instead jumped on the couch and screamed that he loved her (Katie, not Oprah. Oprah sucks).

June 13, 2005: Katie converts from Catholicism to Scientology.

June 16, 2005: Less than 8 weeks after they met for the first time, Tom and Katie get engaged.

April 16, 2006: Katie gave birth to their daughter Suri.

November 18, 2006: Tom and Katie got married in a 15th-century castle in Bracciano, Italy.

This might be a good time to mention that Tom Cruise is not gay and he’s not some secret monster. By all accounts he’s an exceptionally nice guy who cares about his family. The problem is he’s also kinda dumb, and he’s extremely malleable; a dream come true for a seedy cult like Scientology. And while Katie has been steadily distancing herself for the past few years, Cruise is still all in and he wants to raise Suri the same way. She was even attending a Scientology “influenced” private school in Calabasas for about 6 months until Katie pulled her out.

And now she’s filed for divorce in New York. She could have filed in California and probably made more money because those courts rarely enforce pre-nups as they’re written, but she wants full custody of Suri and that’s more likely in New York.

In summation, this fucking took forever. The end.