By Julie Miller, Vanity Fair
To promote the Broadway play in which she stars, Dead Accounts -- the same one delayed by Hurricane Sandy last week -- Katie Holmes agreed to be interviewed with her co-star, Tony-winning Norbert Leo Butz, for a piece in The New York Times. Highlighting the play's Midwestern values -- it is about a brother (Butz) and sister (Holmes), who return to their family's home in Cincinnati, the latter after her relationship falls apart and the former under more mysterious circumstances -- the reporter managed to coax some details out of Holmes about the time she spent in Ohio after her high-profile divorce from Tom Cruise.
Amid her marital meltdown in the summer, for instance, Ms. Holmes took her daughter, Suri, on vacation to her parents' place in Toledo, Ohio. Her father, Martin, took them out for ice cream every night, and Ms. Holmes recalled with delight how she found a new favorite flavor, Spouse Like a House (vanilla with chocolate-covered pretzels and caramel), and worked off the calories by running in the parks of her childhood as the youngest of five.
Further demonstrating her Midwestern-ness, Holmes claims -- in what has proved to be the most likely quote in the piece to be taken out of context -- "I've had box wine. It's good. And it's a lot easier to open."
The comment was simply a reference to Dead Accounts -- box wine and the aforementioned ice cream are both featured in the play -- not a bombshell non sequitur, but that didn't stop Us Weekly from immediately posting a story on its Web site hilariously titled, "Katie Holmes: I Love Box Wine!," Examiner.com from asking its readers, "Is Katie Holmes relying on wine to get her through divorce?," and a third site from merging Holmes's sweet ice-cream and wine anecdotes in the hideous headline: "Katie Holmes pigged out during divorce."
If Katie Holmes hasn't already endeared you by volunteering information about box-wine tastings, taking the subway, and suffering through Hurricane Sandy like the rest of the East Coast, the article also notes that the actress arrived at the interview with "no assistant, no makeup, no jewelry, no designer labels -- only a simple black band to tie her wet black hair into a ponytail."
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