Matt Lauer: Tom Cruise Was My Most Awkward Interview Ever

Matt Lauer's testy exchange with Tom Cruise during a 2005 "Today" show segment was his most awkward interview ever, the anchor revealed in a Facebook Q&A this week.

Lauer, 56, joined the social network on Tuesday and opened the floor for fans to ask questions about everything from his life off-camera to parenthood.

But one of most telling points that came out of the Q&A was Lauer's response to the question about his most awkward interview ever.

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"A bit awkward with Tom Cruise a while back!!!!" Lauer responded. "It was one of those unforgettable moments that became a part of pop culture."

The infamous "glib" interview happened in 2005 when Cruise was promoting his film "War of the Worlds." He and Lauer got into a discussion of psychiatry vs. Scientology in which Cruise criticized Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants for postpartum depression.

"It's very impressive to listen to you," Lauer said at the time, "because clearly, you've done the homework. And you know the subject."

"And you should," Cruise replied. "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do . . . You just communicate about it. If I want to know something, I go and find out. Because I don't talk about things that I don't understand."

"You're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is," Cruise then told the "Today" show co-host at one point. "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance."

Lauer also opened up about the interview during an appearance on Howard Stern's Sirius XM radio show last year.

"There are times where, when you least expect it, you get someone who sits on this couch . . . and all of a sudden you say something and you can see in the person's eyes a physical change," he said. "That was one of those times . . . I knew I was going to go in a certain area, and you watch the change, and then it's your job almost to get the hell out of the way."

"[Cruise] has gone out of his way to be awfully nice to me since then," Lauer continued. "He since has come forward and said, you know, that was a strange time in his life and he regrets the way it came across."

The interview gets awkward around the 8-minute, 15-second mark.

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