Leah Remini Thinks Tom Cruise Has A Master Plan For Daughter Suri

Actress Leah Remini joined the Church of Scientology when she was 9-years-old, according to the New York Post, and in 2013, she reportedly left the church because of concerns about its leader, David Miscavige. Since her departure, Remini has become one of the most vocal denouncers of Scientology. She wrote a memoir called Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, published in 2015, but that was just the beginning. Remini also united with a former church leader, Mike Rinder, to co-host an A&E docuseries called Scientology and the Aftermath. In July 2020, Remini and Rinder launched another project in the form of a podcast called Scientology: Fair Game. 

It's safe to say, Remini knows a thing or two about Scientology and isn't a bit shy to speak out about the group and its members, even its most famous one — Top Gun star Tom Cruise. That's right, Remini has voiced some strong opinions about how Scientology could impact his relationship with his daughter, Suri.

Former Scientologist Leah Remini is weighing in on the high-profile divorce of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes — and according to Remini, the church played a huge role in TomKat's sudden split in 2012.

"I knew Katie when she was in (Scientology) and she seemed very indoctrinated into Tom's world but as time went on, and I understood why she did what she did to protect her daughter..." Remini told the New York Post in August 2020. "I'm only assuming that there's some type of agreement to protect her daughter," according to the New York Post. Suri was born in 2006, and Remini believes Holmes is attempting to shield her only child from Scientology and, consequently, from her father. "Scientology considers Katie a suppressive person which is an enemy and therefore Tom believes, like all Scientologists, that he can't be connected to Suri."

Both Holmes and Cruise have been tight-lipped about their divorce and about how they're raising their daughter, though that hasn't stopped others from speculating about the dynamic. There were even rumors that Cruise hadn't seen Suri in years. Remini is skeptical, to say the least. "I'm sure his master plan is to wait until Suri gets older so that he can lure her into Scientology and away from her mother," she told the Post.

When it comes to Tom Cruise's purported estrangement from daughter Suri Cruise, Leah Remini's theory that the Mission Impossible actor might be biding his time until he can lure Suri back into the controversial world of Scientology might indeed hold water — but it's only one facet of how Scientologists view parenthood and its place in the insular, cult-like religious movement.

According to a number of ex-Scientologists interviewed in 2008 by ABC News – the majority of whom were born into or raised with Scientology's teachings from a very young age – the family unit as a whole is always superseded by the priorities of Scientology and the objectives of its leaders as a whole.

One subject of the piece was Jenna Miscavige Hill, niece of Scientology's current leader, David Miscavige, who was raised as a Scientologist from the age of 2. As high-ranking members of the Sea Organization (or Sea Org), an organization within Scientology that has frequently been compared to a paramilitary order, it was ingrained that Hill's parents' work within the movement took precedence over their child. Eventually, this led to Hill being sent to live on a specially designated ranch from the ages of 6 to 12, where she and other minors were allegedly forced to engage in brutal physical labor (a claim which the organization's officials adamantly denied). 

"What we're told is that [Sea Org members and Scientologists] have to work so hard because they're helping other people," Hill told ABC. "Your family isn't the most important thing."

Whether or not Tom Cruise intends to wait until his daughter, Suri, is older to try and cajole her into joining him as one of the rank-and-file within the Church of Scientology, as Leah Remini has speculated, those with insider knowledge have seemingly stuck with one major theme: That when it comes to Katie Holmes' ex-husband, Scientology takes priority.

In a 2018 exclusive with Us Weekly, an anonymous source who claimed to have access into the inner sanctum of Cruise's circle stated that though the actor could see his daughter up to 10 days a month, as per his custody agreement with Holmes, Cruise simply chose not to. "Every person is allowed to see their child if they wanted to," said the source. "He chooses not to because she is not a Scientologist."

Though the source's framing of Cruise's alleged decision to distance himself from Suri doesn't necessarily align with actress Leah Remini's take — that the estrangement germinates from a deliberate, autonomous choice made by Cruise rather than one that's an enforced de facto (if not official) policy within Scientology itself, the optics boil down to the same thing: When it comes to choosing between Scientology and family, Cruise's allegiances appear — at least to the public — to lean a lot more in one direction than the other.