Nicole Kidman explains love for her Scientologist children

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Nicole Kidman has rarely spoken about her high-profile marriage and divorce from megastar Tom Cruise or her reportedly rocky relationship with their two children together.

There has long been speculation that Cruise’s faith and prominent role in the Church of Scientology played a role in their bitter 2001 divorce. There also have been reports that the church, of which Kidman never became a member, worked to estrange her from Isabella and Connor, the two children she and Cruise adopted during their 11-year marriage.

What’s generally known is that Isabella, 25, and Connor, 23, were raised as Scientologists and decided to live with their father and remain devoted to the organization.

In a new interview, Kidman discusses her children’s Scientology faith and acknowledges that it created a distance between them.

“They are adults,” the “Big Little Lies” star said in an interview with Australia’s Who magazine. “They are able to make their own decisions. They have made choices to be Scientologists and as a mother, it’s my job to love them.”

Kidman, 51, also explained to the magazine why she has always been “very private” about her relationship with Isabella and Connor: “I have to protect all those relationships. I know 150 percent that I would give up my life for my children because it’s what my purpose is.”

Kidman is currently promoting two upcoming, awards-season films, notably “Boy Erased,” in which she plays the religiously conservative mother of a teenage boy who is forced to take part in a gay conversion therapy program.

Kidman’s relationship with her two oldest children became the source of scrutiny over the past year after she failed to mention them while accepting acting honors for “Big Little Lies” at the Emmys in September 2017 and at the Golden Globes in January.

Kidman singled out other family members to thank, including her current husband, country star Keith Urban, and their two daughters, Sunday Rose, 10, and Faith, 7.

Kidman later tried to rectify her omission of Isabella and Connor in her  prominent awards speeches, saying at yet another event, the Critics’ Choice Awards, “I want to thank all of my children, who show me so much love.”

Over the years, Kidman hasn’t been seen much in public with Isabella and Connor. In Scientology parlance, Kidman reportedly become what’s known as a “suppressive person,” or “SP,” because she didn’t join the church. Whether by coercion or choice, Isabella and Connor ended up siding with their father rather than with Kidman, according to The Daily Beast.

In 2007, Kidman reportedly said, “My kids don’t call me mommy, they don’t even call me mom. They call me Nicole, which I hate and tell them off for it.”

Actress Leah Remini, a former Scientologist who has criticized the church on her show “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” touched on Nicole’s estranged relationship with Isabella and Connor in her book, “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology.”

Remini said that after attending Cruise’s 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes, she was riding in a car with the siblings and asked if they had seen their mother recently. The Business Insider reported that Isabella Cruise replied, “Not if I have a choice. Our mom is a (expletive) SP.”

But if Kidman suffered from an estranged relationship with her two children with Cruise, it appears that Cruise is experiencing a similar situation with Siri, his 12-year-old daughter with ex-wife Holmes.

A report last month in Us Weekly said that Cruise, 56, isn’t a part of his youngest daughter’s life — though he could be.

“He chooses not to because she is not a Scientologist,” the source said.

Holmes reportedly gave Scientology a try but the church’s practices didn’t sit well with her. In 2012, she blindsided Cruise with a sudden request to divorce, with reports saying she was concerned that Suri, then turning 7, was getting to an age when the organization would expect to exercise increasing control over her upbringing and education.

As for Kidman and her Scientologist children, she has long maintained there is nothing but love between them.

While promoting her film “Lion” in 2016, Kidman told Vanity Fair, “I’m a mother with adopted children. This movie is a love letter to my children.” In “Lion,” Kidman played an Australian woman who has deep, unconditional love for the two boys she adopted from India.

In her new interview with Who magazine, published Thursday, Kidman explained her unconditional love for Isabella and Connor.

“I am an example of that tolerance and that’s what I believe — that no matter what your child does, the child has love and the child has to know there is available love and I’m open here,” said the actress, who also stars in the upcoming detective drama “Destroyer.”