Former television actress, Leah Remini, tells ABC's 20/20, in an interview to air on Friday night, that Tom Cruise is the major reason she left the Church of Scientology.
Former television actress, Leah Remini, has stated that it was because of actor Tom Cruise that she finally left the Church of Scientology. Remini will tell all in an interview scheduled for Friday night on the ABC’s news show, 20/20. In a quote from the upcoming interview, Remini says that if you stand against Tom Cruise, if you are in any way critical of him, it is the same as slandering the church itself.
The interview with ABC’s 20/20 comes as a prelude to next week’s release of her autobiography entitled: Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, according to USA Today. The Church of Scientology is not expected to be pleased with Remini’s book or her upcoming television interview. She was a member of the church for more than thirty years. She joined the church with her family when she was just a young girl.
Currently, Remini has been guest hosting on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars and has not publicly commented about the upcoming interview. Remini, 45, says that Cruise and Scientology are so intermingled that they can’t be separated. Cruise is so vital to the church that an attack on Cruise is, quite literally, an attack on Scientology.
Remini says on 20/20 that she made her decision to finally leave Scientology after having had many long standing disputes with the church and, especially, its leader, David Miscavige. According to Remini, no one may question his authority and his word on all church matters is final. Her other disputes surrounded the abuse of church members as well as being shunned by one’s family if an individual leaves the church. Families are not even allowed to talk to a “suppressed” ex-Scientologist.
In early 2014, she left the church for good because she began to see that her daughter Sofia’s life was beginning to look exactly like hers was when she was a little girl at a Scientology compound in Florida. Her daughter, Sofia, is nine years old. The church, of course, has publicly denounced her calling her a self absorbed attention seeker bent on destroying the good name and reputation of Scientology by lying and trying to re-invent history.
Remini says she just wants people to know what it is really like inside Scientology.
“As time goes on,” Remini says, “you lose touch with the real world. The mindset becomes ‘us against them’. I want them to understand how this happens.”
