Seth Rogen Says Tom Cruise Once Tried to Sell Him and Judd Apatow on Louis Farrakhan: ‘He’s Great!’

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images, Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow once had an odd encounter with Tom Cruise which included the Mission: Impossible star raving about Louis Farrakhan.

The bizarre event is detailed in Rogen’s new collection of essays, Yearbook, which includes an anecdote about him and Apatow visiting Cruise’s home to discuss the possibility of collaborating on a project.

The meeting took place in 2006 following a whirlwind of negative press surrounding Cruise, who one year prior had jumped up and down on Oprah’s coach and battled with Matt Lauer over prescription drugs on the Today show.

Rogen explained in the book that four hours into their meeting, the conversation veered into how the public thought Cruise “was losing his mind.”

“There’s a coordinated effort to make it appear that way,” Cruise told the comedy duo. When Rogen asked who was behind the effort, Cruise replied: “The pharmaceutical industry … because my exposure of their fraud has cost them so much money that they’re desperate. They’re scrambling and they’re doing everything they can to discredit me so I won’t hurt sales anymore.”

After Rogen cheekily asked, “Big Pharma made you jump on Oprah’s couch?” Cruise insisted that the footage had been edited “to make it look so much worse than it was. They do that all the time. You should see what they do to my friend Louis Farrakhan!”

Apatow jumped in and noted that the controversial religious leader “has said a lot of blatantly anti-Semitic things,” but Cruise rebutted that Farrakhan was “great.” When Apatow pointed out that Farrakhan had “compared Jews to cockroaches,” Cruise exclaimed: “No! See, that’s the media! They’re distorting all of it!”

From there, Cruise went on to maintain that the media was misrepresenting Scientology in a similar way. “They make it seem soooo fucking different than it is! If you just gave me like an hour to tell you about it, you’d be like, ‘No fucking way?!’” said Cruise. “That’s what Scientology is?! No fucking way!! In just one hour I could completely change your minds!!”

Really grateful that @Sethrogen included this anecdote about Tom Cruise in his excellent new book.

– Tom blaming the pharma industry for his woes.

– Tom saying Louis Farrakhan is a great man and his friend.

Amazon: https://t.co/D4ivRgUYbB

Bookshop: https://t.co/3WeJQsNVTn pic.twitter.com/QTH7s6SMCS

— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) May 11, 2021

Rogen noted that both he and Apatow politely declined Cruise’s offer for a Scientology lesson and they never got around to working together.

It should be noted, the Church of Scientology has ties to Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Nation of Islam has also promoted the benefits of Dianetics, the core set of principles created by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.