HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Dr. Drew Pinsky apologized Thursday for remarks he made about Tom Cruise in the latest issue of Playboy magazine.
The host of VH1’s “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew” speculated in the magazine that the actor’s interest in Scientology is “a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood — maybe some abuse but mostly neglect.”
“Dr. Drew meant no harm to Mr. Cruise and apologizes if his comments were hurtful,” Pinsky’s rep said in a statement.
Following the remarks in Playboy, Cruise’s attorney, Bert Fields, told the New York Post that Pinksy is an “unqualified television performer who is obviously just looking for notoriety [and] is so grotesquely unprofessional as to pretend to diagnose Tom and others without ever meeting them.”
“He seems to be spewing the absurdity that all Scientologists are mentally ill,” Fields added. “The last time we heard garbage like this was from [Nazi propagandist] Joseph Goebbels.”
Pinsky’s rep responded to the criticism in today’s statement, saying, “Although Mr. Fields’s intent is clearly to slander and discredit Dr. Drew, under no circumstances is Dr. Drew making a blanket diagnosis about Scientology nor Mr. Cruise whom he does not know. Dr. Drew was simply using Mr. Cruise as an example of someone who is recognizable to help the public understand. Again, Dr. Drew meant him no harm.”
