Leah Remini of King of Queens fame has written a new book about her experience within the Church of Scientology called Troublemaker, and as is to be expected, it’s a doozy.
She talks of the millions of dollars she lost, the years of turmoil she endured and her eventual classification as a “SP” — a shunned Subversive Person — by the church.
Related: Holy Thetan! Nude Tom Cruise Scientology Shroud’s Package Is Xenormous.
But you can’t write a Scientology tell-all without addressing the church’s crown jewel, the one and only Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (yes, that is Tom Cruise’s birth name).
How about we take this to the next level?
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Related: New Scientology Documentary ‘Going Clear’ Outs John Travolta. Again.
Vulture did an excellent job parsing through the book for the juicy bits about Cruise (because after watching Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary Going Clear, who really wants to dive into another tale of Scientology?).
Vulture reports:
She was invited to play hide-and-seek at his house with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith.
“At first I thought he was joking, but no, he literally wanted to play hide-and-seek with a bunch of grown-ups in what was probably close to a 7,000-square-foot house on almost three full acres of secluded land,” she writes. She told him, sensibly, “I can’t play — I’m wearing Jimmy Choos.” He replied, “Well, good. So you’re It, then,” and then tagged her and ran to hide. She pulled her husband aside and said, “Angelo, you’re going to go ahead and do this, because I’m not doing it. I’m not trying to play a fucking game of hide-and-seek in five-inch stilettos. Okay?”There was an incident with cookie dough.
Remini writes that people were “terrified of offending Tom.” Once, he wanted to make cookies, and there was a package of prepackaged cookie dough on the counter. He asked, “Guys, where’s the cookie stuff?” The assistants fluttered around but they didn’t point out to him that it was right there on the counter. “Tom seemed like a child who had never been told no,” Remini observes. “Get in the fucking present time, is what you need to do!” he screamed at his assistant. He then gave a rundown of the hierarchy:“Still not noticing the log of pre-made dough on the counter, Tom raised his hand above his head. “LRH [L. Ron Hubbard] is here,” he said, then lowered his hand to his chin and said, “And Dave and I are here.” Then, with his hand down at his waist, he said, “And you are here.”
This painful scene mercifully ended when Remini nonchalantly said, “Oh wait. Tom, is this it?”
Tom and Katie invited her to their wedding and then asked her to invite Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.
After inviting Leah and her husband to his impending nuptials with Katie Holmes, he then asked her to invite her friends Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. Little did she realize that it would really become all about J.Lo and Marc.Their Rome wedding was “official church business.”
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s wedding was constantly being monitored by two Scientology members, Tommy Davis and Jessica Feshbach. The leader of the Scientologists, David Miscavige, acted like Cruise’s best man. And yet, Remini was seeing a lot of behavior that didn’t accord to Scientology rules. Norman Starkey, who officiated, got “handsy” with Brooke Shields, while Jessica and Tommy were flirting, even though she was married.Someone left Suri Cruise crying on the bathroom floor during the wedding.
During the first dinner, she heard Suri Cruise crying from the direction of the bathroom, and yet, “Katie didn’t seem to notice.” She then went to the bathroom to investigate the situation:After about five minutes I headed to the bathroom to offer some help. When I opened the door, I found three women, including Tom’s sister and his assistant, standing over the baby, who was lying on the tile floor. I didn’t know if they were changing her diaper or what, but the three women were looking at her like they thought she was L. Ron Hubbard incarnate. Rather than talking to her in a soothing voice, they kept saying, “Suri! Suri!” in a tone that sounded like they were telling an adult to get her shit together.
She told them, “What are you guys doing? She’s a baby. Pick her up!” She then took control of the situation and got Suri’s bottle and asked someone to heat it up in the kitchen. When she returned, though, Suri was still on the floor crying. Finally, they picked her up and gave her the bottle, which stopped the crying. “Then Tom’s sister turned to me and said, ‘Thank you,’ as if I were being dismissed.”
She was put on notice during the wedding for hanging out with Jennifer Lopez.
Throughout the wedding, the Scientology handlers kept trying to separate Lopez from Remini, who had come as her friend. They wanted them to arrive to the ceremony separately even though they were getting ready together. When it came time for the rehearsal dinner, the church team tried to separate them again, but Lopez said, “She’s with us,” which made them leave her alone. That Jennifer Lopez voucher goes a long way!Tom Cruise sang “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” to Katie Holmes.
The couple would go on to divorce in 2012.Bella and Connor Cruise don’t talk to their mom, Nicole Kidman, because she’s “a fucking SP.”
Remini was going back to the airport with Bella and Connor Cruise, the kids Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman adopted when the pair was married. When Remini asked them about their mom, Bella replied, “Not if I have a choice. Our mom is a fucking SP.” An SP, you’ll remember, is a Suppressive Person, which is basically Scientology lingo for scum. She observed:Connor just looked out the window. There was something more human about his silence and the sadness I felt in it. My heart broke for him, his sister, and their mother as we rode the rest of the way to the airport without saying another word.
Katie Holmes wrote a “Knowledge Report” saying Remini’s behavior at her wedding “disturbed [her] greatly.”
Get ready for a lot of Scientology jargon ahead. A Knowledge Report is basically an official snitching document. It’s what you write to keep other people in line, if and when you see that what they’re doing isn’t in accordance with Scientology rules. Holmes did so after the wedding, saying that Remini had been “very upsetting” and was a “poor example to others.” A number of other Scientology members submitted such Knowledge Reports against Remini after the wedding.Afterward, Remini had to then submit to a “Truth Rundown” where an “Ethics Officer” does an “auditing” session with you by examining each Knowledge Report. If you say that you saw someone high-ranking like Tom Cruise being an asshole, you then have to say what “overt” (sin, basically) you committed before Tom committed his, and so on. She writes:
The Truth Rundown worked; I started to crack. I begged [the auditor] to stop, and when that didn’t work, I looked into the camera in the wall of the auditing room and directly at the person watching the sessions. “This is not LRH,” I pleaded. “You are destroying my and your own faith.”
Remini endured weeks and weeks of 12 hours a day in auditing, until she “retracted almost everything.” She said that she was the source of the problems at the wedding, and then had to make up for her wrongdoing with a number of gifts and donations, including a gift basket with a letter of apology to J.J. Abrams, whom she was told was upset by her behavior at the wedding.
For Holmes, she spent $2,000 on framing the invitation and other mementos from the wedding for a picture box with a note that read, “I’m so sorry that I destroyed your wedding.” Katie simply responded with a text: “Just handle it with your MAA.” (A MAA is a Master-at-Arms, who oversees ethics at the church.)
Tobi
I normally couldn’t give a stuff if wacko celebrities like Cruise, Travolta, Alley, Cartwright, et al want to squander their zillions on $cientology but Leah was sadly dragged into L. Ron Hubbard’s scam religion by her mother, when she was only eight years old. I hope she wears her SP badge with pride. 🙂
Nate Topaha
2k on a frame? Hell naw!
Cam
She was dragged into it as a child and yet has more sense then the people who went into it as adults. Of COURSE Cruise likes it, he basically has hundreds of people acting as slaves for him.
Good for Rimini for leaving. Scientology is far weaker than anybody knew, now that the internet has exposed their low numbers or weaknesses, but watch for commentators to come on to any article about Rimini posting weirdly insulting responses.
It’s almost funny how obvious they are.
Jbaltes
Who really cares about Tom Cruise. He is irrelevant as a person, as a parent, as an actor… wish the press would start to ignore him as so many of the rest of us have!
Markusfittt
I don’t know when or how, but SOMEBODY please knock Tom Cruise off his closeted high horse! Scientologists are a pious pretentious nut job cult!!!!
ciasteczek
I would love to play hide-and-seek with Will Smith and Tom Criuse
Mark Ilvonen
Creepy cult
Bob LaBlah
Personally, I think she got just what her ass asked for. If it took THAT long for her to realize she had made a mistake by joining these lost (but VERY rich) people then I simply repeat the first sentence of my comment.
Hell, we all know Tom has problems (except his alleged love of black guys, with which I don’t see a mistake there) but overall, who give a fuck about yelling at a tag-along aide?
mujerado
@Jbaltes: – Reading articles about him and writing comments about him is not “ignoring” him. Too funny.
Cam
@Bob LaBlah:
Did you even read the article? She was basically born into it because her mother joined when she was a child. She was raised in it, and yet left. How many others NEVER leave crazy religions?
Caine
The scary thing with all these reports is that moment where you learn someone else is a Scientologist you didn’t know was a Scientologist. In this case: JJ Abrams. Oh no.
AJAnders
I watched Leah’s interview on 20/20 last Friday.
She basically confirmed Scientology’s obsession with money. Ten years ago, she had given 2 million dollars to the church as a gift and she was rewarded a blue plastic trophy that looked like something you could get at the dollar store.
She was sent to Scientology’s headquarters in Clearwater, Florida and fined just for jokingly telling Tom and Katie to “get a room.”
She would have left the church far sooner but she feared if she did, it would mean being cut off from her entire family since Scientology has that habit of destroying families. She was very fortunate that the rest of her family all agreed to leave as well.
Kudos to her for going public with all this info. I hope more and more ex members continue to speak out about this cult.
Joe T
It is a seriously fucked up “religion”. Watch “Going Clear”.
Brandon Eckel
Non
TimberWolf
Mason family-church of scientology they are an occult.sick twisted wealthy who have a no bars hold on each other in an exclusive club all of these members all hung out in the private rooms at studio.54 dirty deeds done dirt cheap. Bored wealthy idiots spoiled with money with no respect for humanity
Bob LaBlah
@Cam: I must have missed that part in the article. I went back and read the whole article and still don’t see it. Please show me where it says she was born into it. Thanks.
Desert Boy
The U.S. Congress needs to step up and yank Scientology’s tax exempt status.
Giancarlo85
The Church (Cult) of Scientology is seeing itself under vicious attack. For a while they seemed to be invincible and untouchable. That has quickly changed and now they are under investigation and facing multiple lawsuits. In other developed countries, their cult is totally illegal and you could actually imprisoned for having any of their propaganda. Either way they had their time and they’ll be done… turns out the entire Church was nothing more than a money laundering scheme.
They are under investigation by the Department of Justice and various other national agencies in other countries (including under investigation by France and Germany). Turns out they were funneling money through dummy corporations in order to avoid paying taxes. Time to use the RICO Act and arrest their top cult leaders. Money laundering, racketeering, and corruption…
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/content/rico-act.html
Sounds relevant.
AJAnders
@ Bob LaBlah
She wasn’t born into the church. She was forced to join the church at age 7 because her mother joined.
Giancarlo85
One serious case I forgot to mention…
http://www.attn.com/stories/1358/shocking-part-going-clear-no-one-talking-about
The FBI is actively investigation the Cult of Scientology (lets call it what it is) for human trafficking.
Their aura of invincibility has totally evaporated with the advancement of these cases and more whisteblowers coming to light. People aren’t afraid of them anymore. They used to use coercion and other criminal means to keep members and ex-members in line. They used threats all the time.
They are smoked. I really hope the RICO Act is used to prosecute these scumbags, as well as charges of human trafficking and slavery.
William Thomas Bramlett II
Crazy cult yes…..millions of followers,yes! Do not underestimate theses fucktards!
khan72
None of you could possibly understand what you mock. Unless you have been audited and your mind freed you will always live in fear of the unknown. We are superior beings because embrace all of our capabilities
Blackceo
If this aint the creepiest shit I ever read. That cult is scary. I watched that HBO documentary on the Church of Scientology and was terrified by it.
As an aside though, my friend has a 9000 square foot house and we have played hide and seek in it. It was fucking fun but not everyone has a chance to be “it” cuz it takes too long to find their ass.
captainburrito
Being shunned by them sounds ideal. It would be far worse if they kept trying to get u back.
Amaurys Arias
Insane celebrity cult .. Can you ask for anything better.
Tracy Pope
@khan72: …”Unless you have been audited and your mind freed you will always live in fear of the unknown.” That is pure cult-speak. I’ve never been audited (and never will) yet my mind is brilliant and I don’t fear the unknown.
Giancarlo85
@khan72: Cult speak indeed. You are an indication of a warped and coerced mind. You are not an independent thinker. You are not a free thinker. You never will be one. Remove the shackles and lies from your puny mind.
Michael Colwell
I used to be one. But got out quick. Real quick. Burn in Hell bitches
Ricochet
This shit would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the kids involved. What a bunch of crazy shitheads.
1EqualityUSA
What the Hell is wrong with humans? Controlled people do weird things. I’m so completely grossed out on this story.
Cam
@Bob LaBlah:
Hey Bob, sorry, that fact was in the larger article you can click to.
Her family joined when she was 7 apparently.
Bob LaBlah
@Cam: It’s all good. I never took offense. There have been times where I’ve commented and seemed to have missed a point that was in the article or had to let the article “sink in” for a minute before I got what it was saying.
The only difference is that I can claim “age” or better yet what is called when your middle aged an “almost senior moment” and you can’t. Take care hon. lol
khan72
@Tracy Pope: SHAME ON YOU. Your post is just more evidence of a closed, frightened mind. Shackled by beliefs based purely on ignorance. Fear of the unknown. Your ignorance keeps you negative, Scientology is the only religion in the world run by a married gay couple – David and Tom. Yes, there was a ceremony aboard the Freewinds.