Prior to becoming a stay-at-home mom I used to work at an office that celebrated Fridays with a building wide potluck. We would all (well, the majority of us anyway) bring a dish to pass and every once in a blue moon our bosses would spring for pizzas. It was a nice tradition and one quite well received by all of us cash-strapped reporters.
Then there were Wednesdays. Each Wednesday, without fail, one of our news anchors (she’s going to kill me for divulging this) would bring in bags of candy, place them on the assignment desk, and watch from her desk as the rest of the building descended on the newsroom like vultures to gorge on the sweet treats. She paid for the goodies on her own and rarely indulged in the sugary confections herself. When someone finally got up the nerve to inquire about her continued generosity (mind you this didn’t happen until about 3 months after she first started delivering the treats—I suppose either people didn’t care who brought it in as long as they could scarf down the candy or they were afraid to ask, lest it prompt a discontinuation of their sugar fix) she simply stated that she made a habit of picking up a few extra bags of candy during her weekly trips to the supermarket.
I thought about my former colleague when I heard the story about Katie Holmes and her cupcakes. According to news reports, the actress is, shall I say, endearing herself to her fellow cast and crew members – all 200 or so of them while she shoots her latest movie, “Mad Money,” in Louisiana.
It seems the new Mrs. Tom Cruise has been marking the end of each week by bringing in special treats for everyone. According to one cast member, each Friday since filming of the movie began Holmes has been feeding the entire cast and crew.
Last week the mother to baby Suri reportedly had gourmet cupcakes carted onto the set. Prior to that Holmes treated the set to 300 ice cream cones. And the week before that, the actress arranged for more than 80 pizzas to be flown in from Chicago and baked locally before being delivered to the set.
“It was a lot of pizza,” one crewmember told a news reporter. “We had veggie, sausage, pepperoni. It was good pizza.”
I assume an actor bringing goodies to the set once a week is about as typical as a news anchor bringing treats to the newsroom on a weekly basis. It makes people wonder. (If it didn’t I doubt it would get as much press as it has.)
So what do you make of Holmes’ generosity? Do you think she (as some have alleged) is trying to bribe people to like her? Or, do you think that she has just found another way to spend her husband’s money?