I’ve sort of been dying to use these photos, which show Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise at the Brooklyn Bridge playground on Labor Day, for the past few days. Now I have an official excuse to do so, which is the unofficial announcment from WWD that Katie has signed on as the first face of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. This seems like an awfully smart move on Katie’s part since the (albeit overpriced) brand attempts to stress the “natural” look, and Katie is very clearly a mom on the go who doesn’t have much time to preen in the mirror. Besides, Katie could use the money since she may very well have kept the loot from her marriage, but she eschewed alimony in favor of only receiving child support for Suri from Tom Cruise. Hey, living in New York City isn’t cheap by any stretch. What I truly love about photos though is that — look — Suri is playing with other children her age! Obviously, she’s clearly enjoying the hell out of herself in the park:

In addition, there are some new details that have leaked about Maureen Orth’s Vanity Fair October cover story that has so far given mainstream credence to the story (which has also been confirmed by director Paul Haggis) that Scientology held wife auditions for Tom Cruise, who willingly accepted Nazanin Boniad as his “Chosen One” for an “arranged marriage” until she made the grave mistake of asking David Miscavige what the hell he was talking about after he mumbled for an entire evening. Afterwards, the CO$ decided that Tom needed a more famous wife, so they settled on Katie Holmes. Now some more details have leaked (some of which arrive courtesy of recent Sea Org defector John Brousseau, who functioned as the contractor for many Tom Cruise projects), and I’m going with bullet points:

Nazanin had no idea about the auditions: Orth told GMA that Iranian-born, London-raised Boniadi “was told she was being chosen for a mission” and was “really going to save the world.” And she claimed that Boniadi did not know what was in store for her – or that she would end up meeting Cruise. Orth said: “[She] was told that she was being chosen for a mission, that was really going to save the world. That she was going to be meeting dignitaries, that it was very important that she look good, and be worldly. And she had no idea, when it began, that [she] was going to end up meeting Tom Cruise.”

Cruise was fully aware of the audition process: Orth also claimed today that Cruise was in on the act, adding: “I do believe that [Cruise] was very much aware that it was going on, or at least he had certainly heard about her, because by the time he met her he did know all about her.”

Brousseau on Nicole Kidman’s separation from Isabella & Connor: “They rejected Nicole — they’ve been instructed,” says John Brousseau, who was a Scientologist for 32 years and formerly the bodyguard and brother-in-law to church leader David Miscavige. Bella and Connor were home schooled, and allegedly accompanied their movie star father, now 50, on auditing sessions, and were taught how to recognize an “S.P.,” Rathbun and Brousseau both tell VF. “They took a course, P.T.S./S.P., Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Person, for persons connected in their lives who are an S.P.,” Brousseau claims. “[Bella and Connor] whispered to me, ‘J.B., Nicole is an S.P.! Our mom’s an S.P. — we hate going and seeing her.'”

Sea Org members are required to watch Tom’s movies & avoid Nicole’s: “The Scientology world hated Nicole,” Brousseau, who left the Church in 2010, says. “People in Sea Org were mandated to see every freaking Tom Cruise movie that came out. But if you ever mentioned an inkling to see a movie with Nicole, oh my God, you’d hear about it.”

[From Daily Mail and Us Weekly]

Isn’t that terrible news about the Sea Org members? Not only are they forced to perform 100+ hours of manual labor for less than $50 per week and eat rice and beans for almost every meal, but they were also required to watch Valkyrie. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment.

Also, those details about Nicole add to what we already knew about how the CO$ labelled her a Suppressive Person and held weekly sessions between Celebrity Centre director Tommy Davis and Isabella and Connor to repeatedly tell them Nicole was a sociopath, but now it’s revealed that those poor children were actually brainwashed to the degree where they claimed to “hate” Nicole? How dreadful. Those children were never allowed to really know their mother. Hopefully, the same experience will never happen to Suri.

Photos courtesy of Pacific Coast News and WENN