I know this isn’t an actual movie. Or is it?

Was this a genuine human moment from a complicated and difficult to understand actor, twisted by the limelight and his years being manipulated by a strange religion? Or was it a calculated, ill-conceived P.R. stunt by a man clearly obsessed with his image and public perception?

Here’s a brief rundown:

minute 1: Oprah yells, “Please welcome, Tom CRUUUUUUUUISE!” The crowd screams. Oprah screams. Tom walks out with a huge smile. Oprah and Tom embrace. He seems truly overwhelmed by the crowd reaction. “Ok. Ok. sit down, sit down,” Oprah implores the crowd. “You’ve got to calm yourselves.” She plays with his hair.

minute 2: “I’m overwhelmed,” says Tom. He sits, then stands again to more applause, then gets down on one knee, then stands, then sits again. “Y’all have overwhelmed me.” He grabs Oprah’s arm and laughs. She grabs his arm in a comforting gesture.

minute 3: “Thanks for coming to my legends ball with Katie.” He grabs both of her hands and shakes them. “It was more than fun, it was more than great, it was historic,” he says. It is a reference to an annual gala Oprah throws to honor African American women in art, entertainment and Civil Rights. Tom seems to be struggling to find the correct words to convey the importance of the event. He is aware that he must be humble, but also appear progressive and adequately respectful of women and African Americans.

minute 4: “You sent me the most beautiful flowers,” says Oprah. Cut to a picture of the flowers. That’s a lot of flowers.

minute 5: Oprah is friends with Tina Turner, and Tina Turner was really excited to meet Tom Cruise because he’s handsome.

minute 7: Tom stands, raises his arms in the air, pumps his fist, kneels, pumps his fist some more. “I’m in LOVE. And it’s one of those things where you just wanna be like, ‘yeah, I like her,’ that’s not how it feels.”

minute 8: Prompted to describe how they met, Tom pauses, giggles, then pauses again, then starts cackling, then stands up and sits down again. He claps his hands together and them buries his face in his hands. “Oh, ladies, please.”

minute 10: Someone in the audience yells out “Was she anxious to meet you, as well?” “Of course!”

Oprah starts repeating stories she has heard about Tom and Kate’s relationship:

“Did you surprise her in Rome?”
“Did you go for a Motorcycle ride on the beach?”
“Did you fly on your plane together?”

He holds her hand and blushes and smiles and nods.

minute 13: I think this is the best moment: Oprah says “Katie said in Seventeen magazine that her dream is to marry Tom Cruise. Are you in the dream making business?” and he responds, “I don’t want to disappoint her.”

The interview repeats itself over and over for another 25 minutes. Tom seems overwhelmed. Oprah says “What happened to you, boy?” Tom says “I just want to treat her right.” He jumps up and down and grabs her hands and shakes them and he seems frustrated and happy and a little freaked out.

Imagine you are the most famous person in the world and you start dating someone and EVERYONE wants to know about it. How did you meet? What did you do on your first date? Are you going to marry her? Are you treating her right?

I don’t think the problem is that Tom Cruise didn’t want to disappoint Katie Holmes. I think the problem is that he didn’t want to disappoint anybody. He went on TV and said everything that he thought people would want to hear. He acted in the way that he thinks people act when they are in love. Like Jerry Maguire. Like David Aames. Like Brian Flanagan.

Oprah’s questions were so personal and so prying that I think it got to him a little. He was angry and excited and taken aback by the attention. I don’t think there is a human on the planet who could have seemed normal in that moment.

So I don’t know how to react to this interview. He does seem a little crazy. It simultaneously looks like a glimpse into the psyche of Tom Cruise the human being, and a mask constructed to deflect the intensely personal questions he knew he would get. I felt sad, and I smiled, and I winced every time the audience almost entirely made up of white, blonde, shoulder-padded women stood up and screamed and applauded.

Later in the interview they show a recorded message from Stephen Spielberg who isn’t in studio because, as Oprah says “He is literally racing against the clock to finish this movie on time.”

Spielberg says, “what you see on your show Oprah, what your audience sees of Tom, is how I know Tom, there are no secrets, he doesn’t have an agenda, this is what I love about you, Tom.”

Cruise stares intensely at the video, as if he’s taking it in and all he ever wanted was to be told by someone like Spielberg that they love him.

Next: War of the Worlds