‘The Arrangement’ tip-toes around TomKat parallels

Josh Henderson and everyone else from “The Arrangement” are adamant about this.

They say their new drama on E! — a crazy cocktail of Hollywood fame, wealth, excess, power, faith, secrets and romance — is not a thinly veiled Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes-Scientology story.

Maybe they honestly didn’t realize that parallels existed until it was recently pointed out to them. But once one sees the TomKat angle in E!’s new scripted series, it’s hard to pretend it’s not there.

Henderson — in his return to television after playing John Ross Ewing III for three seasons in “Dallas” (2012-2014) — stars in “The Arrangement” as Kyle West, the biggest film star in the world.

In the debut episode, airing at 9 p.m. Sunday, Kyle meets and falls for no-name actress Megan Morrison (Christine Evangelista) when she auditions for his next summer movie blockbuster.

After one whirlwind day of romance (in which he whisks her away via private jet to an idyllic island in Mexico), Kyle’s “team” offers her $10 million to become his girlfriend/fiancee/bride.

Megan is told that the contract marriage proposal is a way to control tabloid media coverage of Kyle’s personal life and to protect his image and his “brand.”

She is torn: She genuinely connected with the guy, even though they are fundamentally different in a multitude of ways. But play-acting a romance for money, no matter how it’s rationalized, is just a crass and dishonest thing to do.

It’s worth noting that the people who cooked up this scheme run a secretive and maybe a bit shady self-help/empowerment organization called the Institute of the Higher Mind. This group, led by charismatic Terence Anderson (Michael Vartan), has a huge say in all of Kyle’s career moves and life choices.

The Institute is the pivotal plot point that has many critics connecting the dots to Cruise and Scientology. After all, there has been much tabloid media speculation over the years that the Cruise-Holmes marriage was this kind of calculatedly arranged union — and that his ties to Scientology were part of it.

“I just saw this as a truly unique story,” Henderson says. “You can see the comparisons considering that Tom’s an actor, Kyle West is an actor, they’re both huge film stars and it’s set in Hollywood. But at the end of the day, we’re really telling our own unique story.”

Adds Evangelista: “It’s natural for people to compare. But very soon, early on, you see that these people have their own history, their own relationship and we’re not deriving it from any actual people.”

The premise is a perfect fit for E!, which has teams of entertainment reporters dissecting the private lives of real-life stars.

Jonathan Abrahams, the creator and executive producer of “The Arrangement,” has said that his interest was not specially in Scientology, but in the controversial self-help/empowerment industry in general (i.e. Lifespring, Landmark Worldwide, EST).

That said, during a panel discussion at the Television Critics Association’s winter meetings in January, Abrahams was asked point-blank if Cruise was a major source of inspiration — and what’s more, if the show were modeled after the TomKat story, could the producer admit it publicly?

His non-answer answer went like this: “Even if I could say that I could legally do it, I don’t have the authority to say that.”

Ultimately, of course, it won’t matter what the source of inspiration was.

The show’s success or failure will be determined by sustained viewer interest in the characters, whose romance is fraught with obstacles even before the complicated relationship contract comes into play.

It apparently didn’t work when Tom and Katie tried it. Maybe Kyle and Megan will have better luck.

This story was originally published February 28, 2017 at 11:03 AM with the headline "‘The Arrangement’ tip-toes around TomKat parallels."