Cruise control?

Is it possible that one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets wasn’t much of a secret after all? Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx took the secret celebrity couple template to impressive new levels, denying ever having been together and only being spotted in fuzzy iPhone photos taken by strangers at the next table at some backwoods diner.

But let’s rewind and figure out why exactly these two would ever want to hide in the first place, For that, there can only be one answer: Tom Cruise.

Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise in June, 2012, after, allegedly, she tired of his preoccupation with Scientology and no longer wanted their daughter Suri to be surrounded by the cult. The pair had been married for five years, with Cruise famously declaring his love on Oprah’s couch, bending Holmes backwards at many a red carpet to plant a big wet one as if to prove the legitimacy of their union. It was a love story for the ages (in Cruise’s mind, at least).

However, after they split and Holmes being awarded sole custody of Suri, she flew more under the radar than she ever had, taking the odd role here and there and rarely being spotted be the paparazzi.

Cut to August, 2013, when she was seen dancing with Foxx at a Hamptons charity party, the two quite literally unable to keep their eyes off each other. Over the next four years, rumours would surround them, suggesting they were not only a couple, but were forced to keep their relationship under wraps as part of a clause in Holmes and Cruise’s divorce settlement. Allegedly, she would only be able to step out with a new relationship five years after their divorce in an effort to not “embarrass” Cruise, according to Radar.

Over the years, the pair have been seen together only a handful of times, always in grainy, distant shots, sometimes holding hands, sometimes simply in the same room, always at each other’s birthday parties, often boarding the same planes at separate times, taking different exits from the same buildings. In April, a source said to Us Weekly, “To make it impossible to get photo evidence that they are together, they travelled in cars with tinted windows and took secret back elevators. They had it down to a science.”

But heat picked up when Real Housewife and friend of the family Claudia Jordan told the Allegedly podcast in June, 2016, that Foxx was very “happy” and in love with Holmes. Nevertheless, the pair have continued to profusely deny any romance whenever asked, with Foxx denying anything between them as recently as a few months ago on The Graham Norton Show. Jordan later claimed she didn’t know what she was talking about, and had actually “never seen them together.” Curiouser and curiouser. But now, five years — almost on the dot — since filing for divorce from Cruise, Holmes was seen in a clear set of paparazzi shots holding hands with Foxx on a Malibu beach, not even attempting to hide their love. For all intents and purposes, this is their confirmation.

Whether there was a clause or not, we’ll never know, but one thing’s for sure: the dates certainly add up.