Illuminati Bloodlines

A&E's new reality show follows Remini as she takes on the enormous church she left behind
Teo Bugbee

"When I first started filming this show, I thought I would just be documenting stories of families torn apart by the Church of Scientology's policies and practices," intones the once comedy actress and now justice crusader Leah Remini as she stares straight into the camera, the image pushing in on her face. "What I uncovered was much deeper and darker than I ever expected." Last night, A&E launched a new series called Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath from the outspoken actress and longtime Scientologist as she continues to fight against what she sees as the hypocrisy and abuses of her former religion....

The series is mostly comprised of interviews that Remini made with former members of Scientology detailing the horrors that they experienced during their time in the church, from Scientology's policy of cutting off contact between family members who leave, to fraud, to physical and sexual abuse. A lot of these allegations have been made public before, but the openness about sexual abuse is relatively new information in the narrative around Scientology and its problems, along with what former Sea Organization member Amy Scobee describes in the first episode as the church's practice of punishing abuse from within a secret internal system. But for the most part, the stories that Remini seeks to tell are like others that have trickled out in recent years, as Scientology has incurred more and more high-profile defections....

Remini retreads the story she told in her book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, about her own involvement with Scientology. Her mother fell in love with a man who introduced the family to the religion, and he left her as she was pregnant with their child. Remini became the breadwinner as soon as she could, as she and her mother were taken in by other Scientologist families who promised support so long as they were a part of the religion. For people who have heard the story before, Remini juices the narrative up with the threats and smears currently coming her way from the spokespeople for Scientology. If the church thinks they could scare viewers away by accusing Remini of turning on the church for her own personal gain, Remini is there to read those accusations at the start of the hour, noting that the Church of Scientology lists her collaborators as "deadbeats, admitted liars, perjurers, wife-beaters, and worse." ....