Fact Check: Did Tom Cruise walk off 'The View' after Joy Behar questioned him about Scientology?
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: A viral claim, alleging that actor Tom Cruise stormed off the set of 'The View' in 2025 following a heated exchange about Scientology with host Joy Behar, is making the rounds on social media.
The claim first gained traction on YouTube in early July 2025, after a video titled “Tom Cruise Walks Out of Interview After Joy Behar Calls Scientology a Cult” began circulating.
Claim: Tom Cruise abruptly left 'The View' set following Joy Behar's Scientology probe
The video, posted by the channel The Narrator, described a dramatic scene in which Cruise removed his microphone and exited the set, accusing Behar of “religious bigotry” and a “witch hunt.” Similar versions of the story soon popped up on other YouTube accounts.
The narration read, “This is the story of how Tom Cruise went from promotional guest to walking controversy in less than 20 minutes and why Joy Behar's aggressive tactics backfired spectacularly. But before we dive into this incredible confrontation, make sure you hit that subscribe button and drop a comment below because this story has more twists than a Mission Impossible plot.”
The videos used hyperbolic narration and AI-generated imagery to back the story. As of this writing, one version of the video had more than 77,000 views.
Fact Check: No, Tom Cruise did not walk off 'The View' in 2025
There is no evidence that Tom Cruise appeared on 'The View' in 2025, let alone walked off the show. A thorough search of ABC’s episode archives and other entertainment databases revealed no listings of a Cruise appearance on the program this year.
Additionally, a celebrity walkout of this scale would likely have made headlines across major entertainment outlets, yet no such coverage exists.
Cruise’s most well-known appearance on 'The View' occurred in 2009, when he was promoting his film 'Valkyrie'.
During that segment, Barbara Walters gently touched on Scientology while discussing the passing of Jett Travolta, the son of Cruise's friends and fellow Scientologists John Travolta and Kelly Preston. Cruise remained composed throughout the conversation and did not walk off the set.
AI-generated content likely fueled the rumor
Analysis of the YouTube video reveals it was narrated using AI-generated audio. The voiceover included phrases like “hit that subscribe button” and “drop a comment below,” hallmarks of generic content creation rather than legitimate journalism. The tone, cadence, and sentence structure also lacked natural human inflection, and the AI-detection tool Resemble AI flagged the voice as synthetic.
Moreover, the channel behind the video, The Narrator, has previously published fabricated stories using the same format, overly dramatic storytelling, AI narration, and clickbait headlines about celebrities involved in fictional scandals or confrontations.
The claim that Tom Cruise walked off 'The View' in 2025 following a confrontation with Joy Behar over Scientology is completely false.
