John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Brendan Tighe and the bizarre claims of rivalry at The Church of Scientology
After breaking through as the unrelentingly slick Danny Zuko of the 1978 musical Grease, John Travolta has led a career of peaks and troughs. Every time he slips from under our noses or appears in a questionable movie, Travolta seems to make a triumphant comeback, proving his acting excellence once more.
Travolta’s up-and-down legacy is partially related to the fact that he’s welcoming of diverse roles and shirks from the looming cloud of typecasting. While he threw some iconic shapes in both Grease and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the roles were patently disparate. For those who haven’t seen these two iconic movies, in the former, he’s a horny high school senior romantically falling for Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy. In the latter, he plays a hitman who almost inadvertently kills Uma Thurman’s Mia Wallace with a drug overdose.
As Travolta traversed his varied roles over the past few decades, his personal life has been in no shortage of setbacks; most notably, Travolta’s wife of three decades, Kelly Smith, tragically passed away in 2020 after a battle with breast cancer. Around ten years before that, Travolta’s 16-year-old son, Jett, died after suffering a seizure while on a Christmas vacation.
Travolta, like many of his Hollywood peers, has found solace in the Church of Scientology throughout the rollercoaster of his career. The religion, established by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, holds a core philosophy that decrees each human has a reactive mind that responds to life’s traumas, clouding the analytic mind and keeping us from experiencing reality.
One of Travolta’s fellow high-ranking scientologists is Tom Cruise, who remains one of the Church’s most recognised figures alongside the current leader David Miscavige. However, despite sharing their religion, claims were made that the two actors are not on good terms following a disagreement rooted in the former’s “jealousy”.
In 2018, Brendan Tighe, a former guard for the Church, revealed to the Daily Mail that Travolta became frustrated during his time as a prominent figure in the organisation. Allegedly, problems first arose in 2008 when Miscavige awarded Cruise the coveted ‘Freedom Medal of Valor’, an honour saved only for the Church’s “most dedicated member”.
Tighe claimed that this award made Travolta extremely “jealous” as a result. “It’s no secret that Cruise and Travolta despised each other,” Tighe said. “Travolta wasn’t invited to Cruise’s wedding with Katie Holmes, it told me everything.”
He continued to explain that, despite Cruise’s high rank in the Church of Scientology, Travolta did not “recognise Cruise as a superior in any way”. Adding: “When Cruise got that medal, Travolta was so pissed off.”
“The closest person Miscavige had ever said that about before was Travolta. He was told by Miscavige that he was the most dedicated Scientologist and had introduced more members than anyone,” Tighe added, explaining Travolta’s jealousy. “So it was like getting his title stripped; he was jealous.”
Eventually, it is claimed that Travolta’s feelings of jealousy and mistreatment erupted, and he penned an angry letter to Miscavige. Tighe revealed that the Grease actor “dictated a scathing letter” to his chauffeur, who passed the letter to Miscavige. The letter reportedly featured the question: “What the hell was this medal all about?”
Tighe conclusively added that Travolta hadn’t been the only high-ranking member to voice jealous concerns over Cruise’s award.
In resposne to the past comments made by Tighe, Karin Pouw, an official representative of The Church of Scientology International, has denied the claims in a statement issued to Far Out. “It’s shameful,” Pouw said. “The source of the hallucinatory allegations, Brendan Tighe, has long since been fully discredited”.
Pouw added: “Tighe’s claims about inside knowledge of the Scientology religion and its members are complete fabrications. He was a security guard at Church premises for a short while, spending much of his time in the control room”.
