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# Deconstructing the Tom Cruise Press Tour
- URL: https://thefilmmaven.com/tom-cruise-digger-publicity/
- Published: 2026-09-23T16:45:42.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-23T16:47:24.000Z
- Description: Gotta love when a superstar tries to come down to Earth.
- Author: Kristen Lopez
- Tags: The Trade

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---

Yesterday the social embargo lifted for Tom Cruise's latest film, *Digger*. You can [read my tweet](https://x.com/kristenklopez/status/2102510664392880288?s=20&ref=thefilmmaven.com) in anticipation of my full review which drops next week. And with the movie coming soon leading man Cruise is doing the usual rounds of press. Last week he sat down for [a full-scale interview with *GQ's*](https://www.gq.com/story/tom-cruise-2026-cover-story-interview?ref=thefilmmaven.com) Zach Baron. As Baron himself writes, "Cruise has rarely spoken at length to journalists these past couple of decades. I’m still not entirely certain why he decided to do so here." A few days later [he appeared on the Kelce brothers podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jDt1S9htv0&ref=thefilmmaven.com), *New Heights*. 

Baron isn't wrong. Cruise isn't press shy in the traditional sense, but he doesn't often give extensive interviews, and certainly not ones that focus on his personal life. One only has to read the GQ interview and hear a lot (A LOT) of talk about Cruise's artistic process and his love of cinema. Hell, he literally says at one point, "Making films is not what I do. It is who I am." And yet many would say that's not necessarily who Cruise actually is. For a man who avoids interviews, there's a lot of information about Cruise and, specifically, what he loves and believes in, whether that's filmmaking or his connection to the controversial religious organization Scientology. 

So, for today's newsletter I want to talk about how Tom Cruise is doing things differently (for him) while promoting *Digger*. What he's saying, what he's not saying, and what it ultimately tells people about where entertainment journalism is today. 

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## Why Be Human Now?

Oft-considered one of the last Movie Stars, Tom Cruise has historically ascribed to the old school methods of press publicity, in that many of the interviews he does are highly controlled and often don't involve a lot of insight into who he is as a person. This is seen in the *GQ* interview. "When I ask him what he does when he’s not working on a film, \[Cruise\] says: 'I’m preparing for the next.' This is a typical answer for Cruise, whose approach toward questions that are not about work is to make them about work." Many of us don't know what Cruise does in his free time. His life is his work and that's it. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/24/37/24372e80-8819-45cd-8a9d-4dbc679f7337/content/images/2026/09/digger.image-H-2026.jpg.webp)

With *Digger*, though, Cruise seems to be taking a cue from Leonardo DiCaprio's press tour for last year's [*One Battle After Another*](https://thefilmmaven.com/one-battle-after-another-review-leonardo-dicaprio-paul-thomas-anderson/) (also a Warner Bros. film) which netted him an Oscar nomination. Last year, critics orgs were inundated with DiCaprio glad-handing and pressing the flesh. Not just taking pictures but engaging in conversation with "common" people. Full disclosure, he and I had a great chat about Burbank, of all places. DiCaprio also made himself available for interviews and, yes, even talked about his career on the Kelce brothers' New Heights podcast. The ploy didn't yield DiCaprio the Oscar, but it secured him a variety of nominations while expanding his name branding to a new generation, or pocket of fans, that might not have seen the movie or been interested in his career before.

Cruise started laying the groundwork early, doing a large meet-and-greet when the *Digger* trailer first dropped for a variety of critics organizations and journalists. No doubt that will continue as the movie inches towards Oscars voting. But will it have the same impact as DiCaprio's? There's a generational distinction between the two actors; DiCaprio more associated with millennial film fans and Cruise with Gen Xers. In the *GQ* interview, that question of connecting with younger viewers and Cruise pushed back. "Surprisingly, that’s not true. When you go to a premiere, there’s three, four generations of people that are there. When you look at Netflix, they are able to taste and see these different kinds of films. So those things we’ve discovered in terms of how a library travels globally."

This answer feels a tad out of touch with the average film person. People who go to premieres are often more interested in celebrity in general than the actual film (if they aren't outright influencers). Premieres are also a smaller and more exclusive pool. He also brings up Netflix, the streaming platform whose pre-2000s era film catalog only makes up about 7-10% of movies on the service ([55% of content is simply Netflix Originals](https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/netflix-originals-now-make-up-55-of-us-library/?ref=thefilmmaven.com)). And while there might be his movies on the service, does that translate into young people actually turning them on? Also, [YouTube is where the majority of Gen Zers](https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2025/09/16/gen-z-go-straight-to-streaming-services/?ref=thefilmmaven.com) are actually watching content. I actually was discussing Digger with my little brother, who is Gen Z, this week and he outright said, much like Baron writes in GQ, that he only knows Cruise from *Mission: Impossible*.

## Things Said and Unsaid

So outside of catering to Gen Z, it's clear Cruise also wants to sell himself as "just folks." In that hour-long conversation with the Kelces, the majority of it is discussing filmmaking. But Cruise also takes the time to discuss how much he loves football and Taylor Swift (never mind the appearance comes after Cruise was seen chatting with Swift, Travis Kelce's now-wife, and was allegedly at their wedding). However, if Cruise spends all his time making movies, and can only seem to talk about filmmaking, is anyone truly believing he's watching football and has listened to *The Life of a Showgirl*?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/24/37/24372e80-8819-45cd-8a9d-4dbc679f7337/content/images/2026/09/DIGGER-Tom-Cruise-071426-1-e08914a3374448559a4d581eb89416cc.jpg)

More importantly, these interviews still feel highly curated and, no doubt, that's because of what we do actually know about Cruise and the past times he's opened up. Most famously, the [2005 appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frI%5FBUkH5OY&ref=thefilmmaven.com) wherein Cruise jumped on Winfrey's couch while declaring his love for soon-to-be third wife Katie Holmes. It was one of the more public surprises Cruise had leading up to the release of *Mission: Impossible III* that eventually saw Cruise and Holmes get married before the birth of their daughter, Suri. But it also started to illustrate Cruise's retreating from traditional press interviews. Around the same time as the Winfrey appearance, Cruise got into a verbal clash with then-*Today Show* host Matt Lauer. 

Memes for both appearances started proliferating, whether that was the image of Cruise on the couch, or the phrase "you're glib" (which he said to Lauer) going viral. "Some would argue it changed the course of Cruise's career, ushering in a new level of scrutiny to an actor who had previously shied away from being too personal," [writes *People* in 2025](https://people.com/tom-cruise-couch-jump-on-oprah-is-20-years-old-11737728?ref=thefilmmaven.com). "Executives even suggested the stunt had cost Cruise millions in production deals, the Wall Street Journal reported not long after...At the March 2025 ICG Publicists Awards, publicist Tim Menke — who booked Cruise on Winfrey in the fateful 2005 appearance — said it had cost him that job." 

Add into that what people know about the alleged issues of Scientology, and Cruise's role in it, and it's unsurprising that his interviews feel less than candid, but remarkably safe. Nowhere in either *New Heights* or the *GQ* interview are mentions of Scientology, which makes sense. But neither are there any references to Cruise's three children, his past relationships, or anything about the people who fill his life. In a way, it makes Cruise not human but incredibly sad. This is a guy that claims to watch football (presumably alone) and lives in a real "me, myself, and I" world. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/24/37/24372e80-8819-45cd-8a9d-4dbc679f7337/content/images/2026/09/qdcTRTmy837c22hA.webp)

## How It Connects to Journalism Today

Ultimately, this continues to illustrate the growing contracture in entertainment journalism. The bigger the celebrity, the smaller the publicity is going to be in that a star will want to make the most impact with one or two specific appearances. To quote what I said about [celebrities jumping on podcasts](https://thefilmmaven.com/influencer-podcast/) from last October: "DiCaprio is not just opening up to the possibility of doing any old journalist's podcast...He's a celebrity doing other celebrity podcasts. And *Variety* acknowledges this. 'These aren’t adversarial interviews designed to challenge or probe; they’re largely collaborative exercises where celebrity guests are invited to be charming versions of themselves without significant pushback.'"

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And with the landscape being what it is today, even if a big celebrity takes a chance to do smaller publicity appearances, they believe that that control comes with it. The Kelces don't ask hard-hitting questions so the implication is no other journalist should as well. Publicity for the biggest stars of today isn't presented as challenging or authentic, but canned and simplistic. I'd genuinely love to learn about who Tom Cruise is as a person. I don't have a shot in hell of asking him that personally, nor do most journalists that would actually do a proper interview.

Will this translate into more people, specifically younger, seeing *Digger* when it drops? I doubt it. But, hey, at least you can hear Cruise talk about being a Swiftie. 

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