The XX Factor

Now That Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx Have Reportedly Broken Up, a Theory About Who She Will Date Next

Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith, Tom Cruise, and Katie Holmes, smiling and seated together arm in arm in the ’00s, with Xes drawn over Smith and Cruise's faces, the word "Collateral" scrawled over the four of them, and a line drawn from Jada's finger connecting to a drawn heart on Katie's heart.
You can’t deny destiny… Photo illustration by Slate. Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Essence.

Though they never actually confirmed that they were together, Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx have reportedly broken up. And because Katie Holmes only gets romantically involved with people who starred in the movie Collateral, it seems very clear exactly who the next person Holmes dates will be. Let me explain.

Holmes and Foxx always seemed like a strange pairing, and not just because they dated for three years while refusing to publicly acknowledge it. The relationship followed Holmes’ marriage to Tom Cruise, one of the most publicized and speculated about unions of the ’00s. When they first got married, it looked like Cruise and Holmes might be the next great A-list couple, a fixture on red carpets for years to come. But due to some combination of couch-jumping (or perception of couch-jumping), Scientology skepticism, and stalled careers, things did not go as planned. When the marriage ended, Holmes likely knew the next person she dated would make a big statement, and she had to choose carefully.

But what if she never made a choice at all? What if her destiny had already been laid out for her in a 2004 Michael Mann movie? Tom Cruise, of course, starred in Collateral, playing against type as a contract killer. And his main co-star was Jamie Foxx, playing a taxi driver forced to transport Cruise’s character around as he did his bidding. The evidence is clear: Katie Holmes, known Collateral-sexual, only dates people who starred in Collateral, in the order of their billing. And according to the iron-clad credits of Collateral, Jada Pinkett Smith is up next.

But why, you might ask, and how, would someone’s romantic fate be tied to one not-even-very-well-known movie’s credits? Well, it could be just be a fun dating challenge Holmes set for herself. Or it could be a preordained destiny that she has no say in. At these questions we can only guess, but the fact of it is indisputable: Tom Cruise, then Jamie Foxx, and, if we understand the rules of Collateral-sexuality properly, now Jada Pinkett Smith.

Oh ho ho, you might ask, what about all the people Katie Holmes has dated who weren’t in Collateral? Her Wikipedia page says she dated Joshua Jackson, her Dawson’s Creek co-star, and Chris Klein before her marriage to Cruise. But crucially, these relationships both began prior to Collateral’s 2004 release, and obviously one’s love life cannot be inexplicably linked to a movie that does not yet exist. Thus it is only after Collateral’s release that Holmes started dating its stars, either because Katie Holmes saw the movie, liked it, and said to herself, “I will now date the stars of the movie Collatoral, in order,” or because the movie’s release tripped off some fateful gear in the universe and saddled Holmes with a very specific mission.

Whatever caused this, it seems clear Pinkett Smith is next. A few small obstacles stand in the way: Pinkett Smith is married, to actor Will Smith. There have been rumors that she’s interested in women, which helps this theory, though there hasn’t been much speculation about Holmes on that front, which doesn’t. Also, Pinkett Smith is a Scientologist, the religion Holmes escaped once and probably doesn’t want to get tangled up in again. Good thing love and destiny don’t care about religion.

It doesn’t end there. On deck after Pinkett Smith? Mark Ruffalo. He’s also married, but maybe he won’t be anymore by the time Katie and Jada’s relationship has run its course. A lot can happen over the duration of JadaKat.