After seeing reports that Katie Holmes was kept in a "house of horrors," Tom Cruise is firing back with the threat of a lawsuit. INSIDE EDITION has the latest.
Tom Cruise is fighting back. He says he's not a monster.
Fed up with "vicious lies" about his divorce from Katie Holmes, Cruise's lawyer, Bert Fields says in a letter:
"Mr. Cruise is certainly not a 'monster.' He is a caring father, a hard-working actor and, above all, an honest, decent man."
The letter was a reaction to that nasty "House of Horrors" frontpage headline in the new National Enquirer.
Cruise is threatening to sue the magazine for claiming he "tortured" Holmes while Suri was forced to stay in a "tiny, windowless room" for five months.
In the letter, Cruise's lawyer blasts the article, calling it "disgusting lies" that will "be there for all time, to be read by his children and, someday, his grandchildren."
Attorney John Q. Kelly told INSIDE EDITION, "I think the letter that Cruise's attorney sent the the Enquirer was all posturing. It was just a threat. It was an attempt to keep them from publishing what they did, and once they did, to keep them from publishing anything else in the future. Or minimize it."
Cruise has sued to protect his reputation before. He won a settlement in a 1998 libel case against a British tabloid that claimed his marriage to Nicole Kidman was a sham.
Regarding that case, Cruise said at the time, "This is the final recourse against those who have printed vicious lies about me and my family, and I intend to protect my family."
After more than a week of negative attention, Scientology is also launching a public relations offensive of its own. It's about to open a new TV studio it bought for $42 million on Sunset Boulevard. There's even talk of launching a Scientology cable TV channel.
NBC's Rock Center was bombarded by church officials before it even aired a controversial report about Scientology Thursday night.
Rock Center host Brian Williams said, "They were not thrilled to know this was coming."
Kate Snow said, "That's an understatement. In the past 24 hours we've received letters from attorneys for the church lawyers, attorneys for Tom Cruise, family members. Just in the past hour I've received two letters from family members."
Meanwhile, we're learning new details about Cruise and Holmes' divorce settlement. Cruise will reportedly pay "more than $10 million" in regular child support spread out over 12 years.
A recent video of Suri shows her lounging in a leotard before she spotted paparazzi and hightailed it out of camera range. She was playing with a friend on the trampoline at New York City's Chelsea Piers.
Cruise hasn't seen Suri since news of the divorce broke, but they reportedly could be reunited as early as this weekend.
Meanwhile, a British magazine is making the head-scratching claim that Holmes "hates" the name Suri and wants to change her daughter's name to Scout, just like the character in To Kill a Mockingbird.
As you might expect, the late night comics aren't letting up about the TomKat divorce.
David Letterman joked on the Late Show, "Tom Cruise has been married and divorced three times? I'm starting to think its him."
