Leah Remini and Jada Pinkett Smith filmed their long-simmering Scientology argument
For a few years now, Leah Remini has made it her personal crusade to expose Scientology as the weird, corrupt cult that it has always seemed to be, and part of that mission requires her to talk openly about some of the stuff she encountered alongside prominent Scientology members when she was still inside the organization. That includes a story she told in her 2015 book Troublemaker about a secret Scientology party she attended once at Tom Cruise’s house during which Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith—long rumored to be Scientologists—played some kind of hide-and-seek game with Cruise. This launched a feud between Pinkett Smith and Remini, with the former denying in an interview that the hide-and-seek party was a meeting for Scientology elites. Remini, believing that Pinkett Smith was utilizing a Scientologist technique to discredit critics, claimed that this was further proof that her and her husband are secret Scientologists.
Yesterday, because the internet makes every disagreement so much easier to solve, Remini appeared on Pinkett Smith’s Facebook show Red Table Talk to hash things out. Remini apologized for jumping to the assumption that Pinkett Smith was using Scientology tactics to make her sound like a liar and Pinkett Smith apologized for not seriously accepting Remini’s Scientology concerns, but beyond that it was essentially just Remini reiterating that Scientology is bad and Pinkett Smith maintaining that—while she’s not a Scientologist—she thinks they’re pretty cool. Remini pointed out that this was probably because the higher-ups at Scientology are very protective of famous people who are on their side, since it’s extremely good PR to get someone as famous as Jada Pinkett Smith publicly saying that Scientology doesn’t seem so bad, but it’s clear that neither of them are going to budge in one Facebook video.
Either way, the two patched things up, proving once and for all that ex-Scientologists and possible-Scientologists can still be friends—at least until those aforementioned higher-ups at Scientology decide that Remini is a suppressive person and they force Pinkett Smith to stop talking to her.