Do you people really want the truth?

Can you handle the truth?

You all are going to have to calm yourself so you won't make it through the hour.

Because he's in the building! Hello and welcome! Hello and welcome to Season 2 of Late Do You Remember This?

A podcast where we look back on all the stories from

Hollywood's best, worst decade, the early 2000s, a time in history when America found out

that with a trust fund, a sex tape, and a dream, you too could become a star. I'm your host D Darla Lane, with part due of our episode on the relationship of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise.

In April 2005, the issue of 17 had come out and Tom's handlers caught wind of the article.

They brought Katie in under the pretences of auditioning for Mission Impossible 3,

but they secretly had her in mind for an entirely different mission altogether.

After the meeting, everyone was smitten with Katie.

She was beautiful and poised. Most importantly,

she seemed impressionable. Deb Baer, who interviewed Katie for the Fateful 17 article, and then again

for a Cosmo Girl piece, noted years later that Katie seemed like, quote, easy prey. She said that she was the nicest celebrity she ever

interviewed, but appeared naive and a questionable judge of character. All clues point to Katie

being an earnest person, a Lizzie McGuire type. In high school, she had the opportunity to fly out

from Toledo, Ohio, to L.A. to audition for Dawson's Creek.

She turned it down because she was playing Lola and Damn Yankees at her high school and didn't want to disappoint her friends by missing a performance.

The producers were shocked, but her purity paid off when she got the role based off of a VHS self-tape.

This time, her guilelessness would open her up to be manipulated by a cult.

After Katie was approved, her relationship with Tom took off fast.

She dumped Chris Klein and then two weeks later went out publicly with Tom,

...