One of the big revelations about “Going Clear,” Alex Gibney’s documentary about Scientology: the cult ended Nicole Kidman’s marriage to Tom Cruise. This will all come out when “Going Clear” airs in March on HBO. Gibney has former Scientologists on the record talking about how Cruise, persuaded by Scientology’s David Miscavige, authorized the wire tapping of Kidman’s phone. This was in 2000-2001. You may recall that just a couple of years earlier, Cruise and Kidman’s phones were tapped by a photographer who ultimately went to jail.
But I digress.
You may also recall that Cruise’s private investigator, Anthony Pellicano, is currently serving a long prison term for illegal wiretapping. Pellicano worked for Cruise’s attorney, Bert Fields. A Fields associate, and Cruise attorney, is one Ricardo P. Cestero, former Pellicano aide.
As I wrote in 2006: “But what most people don’t know is that before he went to law school and came to work for Fields, Cestero labored in the office of Anthony Pellicano as a private investigator. In fact, he was schooled at Pellicano’s very knee. Ricardo P. Cestero graduated from Oberlin College in 1991. According to the Greenberg Glusker Web site, he got his law degree in 1997 from the University of California Los Angeles School of Law. This differs from the Martindale.com Web site, which has biographical info for all attorneys. Cestero graduated from law school there in 1999. Either way, in the years between graduating college and getting his law degree, according to sources and reports, Cestero worked exclusively for Pellicano, who in turn worked for attorney Bert Fields. Fields has maintained throughout the Pellicano investigation that he knew nothing of the private detective’s activities and sanctioned nothing illegal.”
Just so we have that all in the same place.
Kidman was gobsmacked when Cruise filed for divorce in February 2001. Six weeks earlier, on Christmas Eve 2000, Cruise and Kidman had renewed their vows after ten years of marriage. While Cruise filed, he checked off a box on his divorce form indicating he and Kidman had not made the decade mark. Kidman, as I reported back then, had been observed with Cruise and family at the Hotel Carlyle in New York in October 2000, happy as clams.
When Cruise filed, she was dumbfounded. She went through a bad period. But the happy ending is that Kidman remarried (happily, to Keith Urban), they have two children, and she is close to her older son and daughter. When she mentions them, she lights up.
And Cruise? Katie Holmes and her daughter, Suri, escaped, mostly unharmed. Now Gibney and co. are calling for Cruise to denounce Scientology publicly. It’s not going to happen. For better or worse, they are his family.
