March 2009
Katie Holmes talks about daughter Suri to Glamour!
GLAMOUR: Still, you’ve come into your own. In a recent interview you said, “I’m a bit wiser.” How?
KH: Well, becoming a mother has been the most amazing experience—in an instant you become strong. You have to be a little bit wiser; it’s the most important job in the world.
GLAMOUR: Did it scare you at all? The responsibility?
KH: Of course. During the first couple of days [with Suri], we would just sleep right next to her to make sure she was breathing. And I was constantly learning on the job, but Tom was very helpful and supportive.
GLAMOUR: You are very protective of your family. You’ve said a couple of times [in response to various rumors about her relationship with Cruise, a practicing Scientologist, and speculation that Suri didn’t exist] that all of the gossip is “not OK.”
KH: Some of the stuff [people said] was such absolutely horrible things to say about a child. It was so uncalled for and so disgusting. Enough is enough.
GLAMOUR: Did Tom ever say, “Don’t worry about it” [since he was more used to media scrutiny]?
KH: Yes. We were changing diapers. He said, “I don’t want you to get upset.” And I said, “Well, I am upset.” So we approached it together. But I definitely felt like—as a woman, as the mother of Suri—I want to handle this! My mom is very strong, and if anyone ever said anything about any of us, she would be, “Excuse me? That’s my family!”
GLAMOUR: As you know, the rumor right now is that you are pregnant!
KH: Well, I’m not pregnant right now.
GLAMOUR: The people who print stuff like that…if you could say something to them, what would it be?
KH: Sometimes I think I would say, “Why don’t you come over and have dinner? See what there is to see.”
GLAMOUR: And what would they see? What’s a day in the life of Katie, Tom and Suri?
KH: We’re all together. We like to be together, so we use the house for our [business] meetings. [We] play Yahtzee, board games, Scrabble. We grill; have pool parties. We play “The Three Little Pigs” and Suri is the Big Bad Wolf. [Tom] reads storybooks to Suri, and we all laugh. When a good song comes on, he’ll break out in a dance. We’ll watch movies in bed—recently Madagascar and Cinderella, for Suri. We really have a good time.
GLAMOUR: And Suri, does she know that she has famous parents?
KH: She does. [If] Tom or I are on TV, we’ll watch it. And when we were in New York, we would see a lot of Valkyrie posters. She goes, “Look! There’s Valkyrie movie!”
GLAMOUR: Who is she more like?
KH: You know, I see glimpses of Tom and me in her. She’s really such a special girl—strong and funny. She’s her own person. She has a great sense of humor.
GLAMOUR: Now, moving from love to work: Tell me about the experience of doing a play every night on Broadway.
KH: I always wanted to do theater. And that experience was better than I could have ever imagined. It was fascinating because your performance changes every night. You’re learning different things about the play and your character. It was great to have Suri come—she couldn’t come every night, but she came a lot during the week. To have my family there was icing on the cake.
GLAMOUR: And what’s this about a clothing line?
KH: My friend Jeanne Yang and I have been working together. She’s got twin girls about six years old, and we both grew up with mothers who sewed. We started about a year ago, sketching different things, trying to find comfortable clothing for our daughters that is also pretty and cute. We just started, and we’ve played around with doing things for women as well.
read here the full story by Sheila Weller.
