The latest development, in what has been a
busy month, is the testimony of
Anette Iren Johansen, a woman who parted ways with the religion in 2010 and gave an interview to
Tony Ortega's Underground Bunker and the Australian magazine
Woman's Day about her "audition" for the role of Tom Cruise's girlfriend in 2005, before he paired off with Katie Holmes. I suppose
Vanity Fair wasn't eager to devote
another cover to a would-be Mrs. Cruise pre-vetted by a group of Scientologists, having been blasted with an
eight-page letter from the organization after Maureen Orth wrote her exposé on fellow auditioner Nazanin Boniadi in 2012. Boniadi's audition led to a brief relationship with the actor (during which time he reportedly asked her to file down her incisors), but Johansen's audition process ended following a cryptic phone call during which she was asked about whether she had any sexual perversions (though she said that she did not, they did not contact her again). At the time, Johansen was a 27-year-old practicing Scientologist living in Denmark and was familiar with vying for roles in Scientology media after appearing in training films and magazines, but something about this audition struck her as funky from the get-go: Instead of a script she was asked personal questions, she had to sign a confidentiality agreement, and the session was run entirely by women. Plus, she auditioned solo, as though for a short and lonely season of
The Bachelor.