Leah Remini has been very vocal about the difficulty she’s had in readjusting to her life outside of the Church of Scientology after leaving it two years ago, but in a recent interview with ABC’s 20/20, the actress revealed the extent of her struggles.
“The decision to leave is… you’re giving up everything you’ve worked for your whole life,” she says in a preview clip of the interview, set to air on Friday, Oct. 30. “I think people need to understand that this was my whole life, and I want them to understand that this is how it happened.”
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Remini, 45, very publicly denounced her association with the church in July 2013 after more than 30 years, and doing so, she says, meant having to recalibrate her way of seeing the world.
“As time goes on, you begin to lose touch with the real world,” she says. “The mindset begins to be ‘Us against them.’”
Additionally, the former King of Queens star says that other Hollywood mainstays who are a part of the church suddenly become off-limits.
“Being critical of Tom Cruise is being critical of Scientology itself,” she claims, adding that anyone who dares to disparage either was deemed “evil.”
On her TLC reality show, Leah Remini: It’s All Relative, the actress has admitted to seeking therapy in order to help her transition.
“I decided that it’d be a good thing for me to start therapy because we all go through things in our lives, and with leaving the Church of Scientology, you know, there’s a lot of feelings, and I really didn’t have an outlet for that,” she said on the Season 2 premiere of the show. “Now I have somebody to talk to who could prescribe drugs … I joke!”
Remini’s constant talk about Scientology isn’t particularly welcomed by the church, however. In May, a spokesperson reach out to Us in response to Remini’s claims about Scientology.
"Given Leah Remini's insatiable desire for attention, it comes as no surprise that for two years she has been incapable of moving on with her life and remains obsessed with shamelessly exploiting her former religion in a pathetic attempt to get publicity," a spokesperson for the church told Us Weekly in a statement.
