Judd Apatow calls Tom Cruise stunts “ads for Scientology”

Last Updated on February 23, 2023

Judd Apatow was tasked with hosting this year’s Directors Guild of America Awards and wasted little time centering his jokes on some of the key players of the awards season. One particular target for Apatow was Tom Cruise, star of Top Gun: Maverick, the director of which (Joseph Kosinski) was nominated.

Apatow played it light at first, taking jabs at Cruise’s height, which are easy and juvenile enough. “The special effects in Maverick were so top notch, I couldn’t even see the stack of phone books Tom Cruise sat on to reach the flight controls.” Thankfully, Apatow didn’t turn it into a 10-minute bit, thus making the ceremony shorter than most of his movies.

Apatow then focused on the elaborate stunts Cruise has become even more famous for. “Remember when Tom Cruise jumped up and down on the couch and we all thought, ‘What a lunatic!’ And now he rides a motorcycle off a cliff and base jumps and we’re all like, ‘Tom’s fine!’” Apatow continued, directly tying these stunts into the actor’s affiliation with the Church of Scientology. “Every time he does one of these new stunts, it does feel like an ad for Scientology. I mean, is that in Dianetics? Because there’s nothing about jumping off a cliff in the Torah.” Our crack team of researchers here at JoBlo could not confirm this at press time.

But it wasn’t just Tom Cruise that Judd Apatow went after. He also took himself to task, noting how bad his latest movie, The Bubble–a critically panned comedy set during the pandemic lockdown–was. “Do you know what it’s like to work hard, and then go see the Top 10 on Netflix, and you’re behind Is It Cake?…And then you watch Is It Cake and you realize you like it better than your movie?” Apatow raises a fine point here: his self-indulgent The Bubble is up for the Golden Schmoe Award for Worst Movie. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, is up for Best Actor and Favorite Celebrity. Top Gun: Maverick has seven nominations, including Favorite Movie and Best Special Effects…so maybe Apatow was onto something after all. (You can see the full list of nominees here.)

The top DGA award went to The Daniels for Everything Everywhere All At Once, marking the first time a duo has won since the Coen Bros. did so for No Country for Old Men. The DGA win gives Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert the edge at next month’s Academy Awards.

How do you feel about Judd Apatow’s jokes regarding Tom Cruise and Scientology?