Katie Holmes Gets Flustered When Asked About Tom Cruise in Pre-Split Interview

Katie Holmes seemed relatively at ease on June 27, just one day before she blindsided Tom Cruise by filing for divorce after five years of marriage. The Romantics actress, 33, was being interviewed for C's September issue six days after she participated in a sultry photo shoot for the California lifestyle magazine.

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"Going back over the tapes, there were signs: Holmes was certainly very aware of herself, laying a couple cards on the table but never showing her whole hand," senior editor Kelsey McKinnon, who interviewed Holmes, tells WWD. "Most noticeably, the one name decisively absent from her lexicon: Tom Cruise. She never actually refers to him by name over pages and pages of transcription."

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When McKinnon asked Holmes if having Suri, 6, brought her and Cruise, 50, closer together, the Ohio native became flustered. "I don't know. I mean. . . I don't know," Holmes responded. "People have been having babies a long time."

Regarding her future, Holmes told the magazine that she is "ready to take on some more challenging roles."

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"I feel like I worked so much at such a young age that I really wanted to have life experiences. I feel more balanced and like I have more to bring to the table," she explained. "I always felt like I wanted to catch up [in my personal life] to what I was doing [in my career]."