Suri is eighteen, and I am 100

The OG tabloid babies are now legal adults

If you are a person of a certain age like me, you will remember Suri-palooza. After a load of couch-jumping and a high-profile Italian wedding, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes had finally produced the human baby that the tabloid media had been salivating about. It was incredibly strange at the time, this appetite for a small infant who had famous parents but looking back, it was downright deranged. Sure, Tom was the biggest movie star in the world and Katie was… well, she used to be on Dawson’s Creek. But this relationship was to be Cruise’s salvation after a very public and messy divorce from Nicole Kidman, and the first whispers of Sc*entology. The focus on the newborn though? BANANAS.

Conspiracy theories abounded. WHY were they not showing her off? Did Suri even exist? Did she look like a different famous movie star? Some even questioned if the poor child had some kind of physical issue that meant her parents didn’t want her on display. It was quite honestly crazy. Then five months after her birth, Suri was debuted publicly in a 22-page spread in Vanity Fair shot by Annie Leibovitz. The die-hard baby watchers could relax - she was real, and she had loads of hair!

But then shit got even weirder. By the time Suri was five, TomKat were going through an incredibly acrimonious divorce. Her mother, striving to protect her, kept Suri largely out of the public view but rumours abounded that the child had nothing to do with her father. Indeed, Cruise was often on the other side of the world when Suri was celebrating milestones, and they haven’t been photographed together in a decade.

Now Suri is 18 years old, and has become the latest nepo-baby to drop her errant father’s name from an official occasion. Choosing to go by Suri Noelle at her high school graduation, the freshly-minted legal adult is sending a message - and she’s not the only one.

Earlier this month, Shiloh Jolie came of age and legally filled to remove the double-barrelled Pitt from her last name. Brad and Angelina’s daughter’s actions mimicked those of her little sister Vivienne, who in weeks prior listed only her mother’s surname in a Broadway Playbill. Online commentators shrieked about parental alienation and Angie turning the girls against their dad, but Pitt’s issues with his family are well-documented, like Cruise before him. Long, difficult and contentious divorces, allegations of wrongdoing on both mens’ parts and strong relationships with their mams seem to have led these teens to a momentous decision, albeit one that the families must know would be widely reported on.

The Suri thing is particularly weird for me, because I remember the hullaballoo surrounding her birth very clearly. I was 19 or 20, an adult myself. So her being 18, well, it’s feckin weird. What’s also weird is that since she turned 18, paparazzi pictures of her are springing up everywhere. I’m not sure of the intricacies or even ethics of individual agencies regarding shots of minors, but now it’s clear that all bets are off. On instagram, I’m seeing the poor girl kissing her fella in Central Park. It’s incredibly weird, it’s icky. Leave Suri alone, again! And thankfully, that seems to be what just about every commenter on Insta thinks, too.

I guess what’s strange is that in the era Suri was born, magazines reigned supreme. There was no comment section, and ONLY money talked. If you put something scandalous on the cover of your mag, it would sell. Thus, that is what these editors did - no judgement, that was the job then.

Nothing was instantaneous, everything was kept under wraps for deadlines and big payouts. This was the time when if a Sunday newspaper had a huge scoop, they would literally keep the subject of say, a big kiss and tell, in a hotel until the paper came out so another title couldn’t swoop in and get to them with more money. This was the era when people’s weddings were shrouded in secrecy, with intricate tunnels constructed so that flying paps couldn’t get a blurry shot of the bride. Six and seven figure sums changed hands, which absolutely blows my mind as someone who came in to magazines just a few short years later, when everything had changed.

With the advent of first the internet, then the recession and then social media, print journalism changed enormously in such a short time and I was right there when it happened. Now in 2024, the rules are different all over again. The tabloids will still buy and print pics of Suri, and breathlessly report on anything she does. But they don’t sell to nearly the same levels anymore, and are often out of date before they hit the newsstand. It’s TikToks and grainy Instagram videos that are the real “get”. It’s even getting harder for the paparazzi (boohoo, lol). Set-up pap walks look too obvious now, and the ones that lurk from far away with a long lens are deemed super creepy (as they are, obvs). Celebrities now take announcements and reveals in to their own hands - who can forget Beyonce’s Instagram shoot when she was pregnant with the twins?

Actually, Beyonce is a great example of how things changed so quickly. She revealed her pregnancy with Blue Ivy in 2011 by opening her jacket and stroking her baby bump at the VMAs. But then the entire world was on bump watch because of one three second video that appeared to show the singer’s stomach bend oddly when she sat down. Because of a clip spreading like wildfire on the internet, suddenly Bey was accused of not actually carrying her child, of having a fake stomach and of lying to us all. That incident (along with Elevatorgate of 2014) caused many celebrities to clam up completely when it came to giving interviews - Beyonce very rarely even speaks on her own behalf anymore, choosing to reveal what she wants, when she wants via her own channels. The game is constantly changing, what’s deemed acceptable and who has access to what. There’s no point locking someone in a hotel room now so they don’t blab - five seconds on TikTok Live, and the word is out.

The passing of time is evident in many things, but it’s these nepo babies coming of age that really hit home for me. Apple Martin is 20 and the bulb off her mother Gwyneth. Violet Affleck is 18 and also the bulb off her mother Jennifer Garner. Shiloh is the bulb off Angie - seriously, did the famous men’s genes even get a look in? These are the children whose births were such huge news, their unusual names discussed in the pages of every major newspaper and magazine going. These were the kids at the coal face of the trauma of tabloid media. And now they’re having to cope with social media, bless them.

So they are adults and I am 100. I must retire from celebrity watching before North West makes Kim a grandmother. Pass me my knitting needles, please.

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