Inside Tom Cruise’s Relationship With The Woman Scientology Auditioned To Be His Wife Before Katie Holmes
She went through months of tests.
Jaguar PS / Everett Collection / Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock Before Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes, another woman was lined up to be with the Church of Scientology’s favorite member.
Holmes and Cruise's relationship — and divorce — has long been an insight into the inner workings of the controversial church. Holmes was reportedly selected by the church to marry Cruise after leaders determined he needed to be part of a Hollywood power couple.
After his relationships with Nicole Kidman, and his last girlfriend, Penélope Cruz, had failed because of disagreements in Scientology beliefs — Cruise was in need of a partner who would help promote Scientology. Holmes, for a time, became this perfect match.
But she wasn't the first choice.
Scientology initially matched Tom Cruise with Nazanin Boniadi.
Boniadi was “a gorgeous, petite, Iranian-born woman in her mid-20s who had been raised in London and whose mother was also a Scientologist,” according to sources, via Vanity Fair.
Before she became the established activist and actress that she is today, she was summoned by an important church official to the Celebrity Centre International — a Scientology building devoted to turning “average” people into celebrities.
There, she met Greg Wilhere, a high-ranking Scientology official, who told her that she would be part of a discreet mission that would take her to meet dignitaries worldwide.
What she didn’t know, was that this would be the start of a months-long process to vet her into the perfect woman for Cruise.
The first month “entailed her getting audited every day and telling Wilhere her innermost secrets, including every detail of her sex life.”
They allegedly told her that the red highlights in her hair had to go, the braces that she only had to wear for six more months, and the Iranian man that she had been dating and was ready to be engaged to.
According to several people who had heard her story from her, Scientologists showed her confidential information from her boyfriend’s auditing files which led to her breaking the relationship off.
“She was crushed,” one of her confidants told Vanity Fair. “They gave her auditing to make her feel better, and they took her to Saks and Burberry in Beverly Hills to buy her an expensive wardrobe.”
She was told to write a 20-page single-spaced essay on “what she wanted and needed in her life in terms of a partner, family, and work to satisfy her goals and aspirations.”
Once that essay was sent off and approved, she received a confidentiality agreement and was told that if she left or “messed up” then she would be declared a “Suppressive Person” in the name of Scientology and would be shunned by everyone in the organization, including her mother, who was also a believer.
Wilhere told her to get a good night’s sleep as her mission would start tomorrow.
He took her to Scientology’s New York center, where she would meet the man she would be arranged to marry.
“This is Mr. Cruise. We can’t let him down,” Wilhere told Boniadi.
For several months after, Boniadi and Cruise were inseparable, and Boniadi had entered forced isolation due to the confidentiality agreement she had signed.
She had been told what to do, how to behave, and was told to do whatever Cruise had wanted.
She was to be the perfect girlfriend for Cruise, but everything changed when the leader of Scientology, David Miscavige, and his wife Shelly, came by their house in Telluride.
Boniadi was told to entertain the Miscaviges as she had come home early due to a snowmobile accident and was injured.
During the encounter, she had trouble keeping up with David’s rapid-fire English speaking and had reportedly asked “Excuse me?” several times.
In Scientology, the ability to have your communication land is crucial, so she had made a grave mistake.
“Miscavige took that as an insult,” says a confidant of the woman’s, which led to Cruise being furious with her and resulted in their eventual downfall.
Boniadi was forced to “atone” for her transgression and “confess” her crimes to the church, and while she still lived with Cruise, the distance between them never stopped growing.
“During the third week of January, Boniadi was asked to pack a bag and move into the Celebrity Centre,” Vanity Fair reported.
When she had asked why, the source revealed that Tommy Davis had told her “He wants someone who has her own power—like Nicole.”
The search for Cruise’s new wife began, and Boniadi was quickly and efficiently done away with without even being told she had been broken up with by Cruise.
“Tom never broke up with her,” Marc Headley, a known Scientologist whistleblower told Vanity Fair. “He never spoke to her.”
According to Headley, the auditioning tapes for Cruise’s future wife never stopped even while he and Boniadi were together.
“O.K., boom, next one. O.K., boom, next one,” he said. “She gets kicked to the curb. And a few months later he’s madly in love with Katie and jumping on couches.”
Shortly after the whole ordeal, Boniadi left the church and Cruise married Holmes in 2006.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Since graduating from Rutgers University, he spends most of his free time gaming or playing a fictional sport. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.