Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology (18 page)

“Oh, yeah, it was great,” I said.

I was in Florida getting my ass handed to me for changing a fucking seat.

“What did you do?”

“I was in Florida for a while.”

When it came to talking about my role and required activities in the church, I would often lie to people. When a non-Scientologist girlfriend asked me how things were going with Angelo, I never admitted to the usual marital problems that couples have, because that would have been revealing something less than the perfect image demanded of Scientologists. The list of workarounds to keep up appearances goes on and on.

Being a Scientologist was like having a double life. When Jennifer asked me, “Oh, so you’re going to Florida?” after we returned from the wedding, like it was a casual trip to Disney with Sofia, I wanted to scream, “I’m going to Florida after Katie and Tom and everyone else wrote five thousand reports on me because I asked to change a seat at the wedding.” But I couldn’t say anything other than an equally casual “I’ve got to do some auditing,” unless I wanted to
be in deeper trouble with my church. I couldn’t even tell Angelo about the full extent of what I was doing at Flag every day while he hung out with Sofia by the pool, since it would discourage him from being on course. So I kept it all to myself, which was the loneliest feeling in the world.

Just because I had made up the damage from my time in Italy in Scientology didn’t mean that everything was fine in the real world. I heard through a few different people that Tom’s agent, Kevin Huvane, was going around town telling people how disgusting I was at the wedding and how much he hated me. Anybody allied with Tom felt they had to jump on the bandwagon. I didn’t blame Kevin for his attitude. If my friend told me that someone had ruined his wedding, I would think she was a bitch too.

But I didn’t want Kevin, who also represented the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Meryl Streep, hating me. So I picked up the phone and called his office to apologize. (Naturally, he didn’t take my call or call me back, so I kept calling until finally I got him on the phone.)

“Hey, I heard you wanted to represent me,” I joked.

“Not in a million years,” he said.

“I was kidding. Anyway, I’m sorry if you thought I caused a scene at the wedding…”

“Did you just say the word ‘if’?”

“Somebody must have told you something incorrect, because—”

“Nobody told me anything.”

“Well, I just wanted to say I didn’t make a scene…”

“So are you calling to apologize, or are you calling to lie to me?”

Now, this is Tom’s agent, the last person I need to be out PR with. I couldn’t afford to have another report written on me.

“I am sorry that I upset you.”

“You are probably one of the most classless people I have ever met.”

“And you’re an agent, so that’s saying something.”

Nothing. Zero. Silence.

“Okay, Kevin,” I said. “I hope you can forgive me.”

As it turned out, I wasn’t quite out of the woods with the church either. I certainly was persona non grata with Tom Cruise and his inner sanctum. However, there were also issues with my spiritual development. After all the time and money I spent in Florida, I was not getting on OT VII. Back home in L.A., I accepted my fate and started auditor training. Still I wondered if I was ever really going to be accepted by my church again, despite the countless commendations and rewards I had received from different members of the church and Sea Org.

Or perhaps it wasn’t so much that I wondered if I was going to be accepted; rather, I thought,
Who the fuck are Tom and Katie? What kind of religion is this, that my spiritual path is being dictated by actors?
I wasn’t there to be doing shit about Tom and Katie. I was there to get to the next OT level.

So when in 2007 Tommy Davis and Mike Rinder (at the time the executive director of the Office of Special Affairs, which oversees a wide range of the church’s activities all over the world, from corporate issues to legal affairs to PR to investigations, including secret ones) asked me to join Anne Archer, Kirstie Alley, and Juliette Lewis in defending Scientology for a documentary the BBC was making on the subject, I agreed to do it.

Inside the Hollywood Guaranty Building—the center for the church’s secretive Office of Special Affairs, a place that most Scientologists never get to enter—we were briefed about the BBC reporter John Sweeney, who was working on the documentary. According to the files we read, he was essentially a liar with mental problems, a classic Suppressive Person. Tommy, leading the charge in discrediting Sweeney, said, “This guy is crazy. He’s going to ask you all kinds of things. You know what to do: Dead agent all his questions.”

Scientologists are often prepared to respond with what’s called dead agenting—a method of shutting down any criticism of the church by disproving the veracity of the source of information. A common dead agenting strategy is to sidestep any questions from
outsiders that could hurt the church, and focus instead on exposing supposed lies the source told or attempt to undermine his or her credibility with
ad hominem
attacks.

We learned to first ask questions like “Do you still beat your wife?” Then only offer partial truths in response to their questions, and finally, try and deflect by referring to positive things the church has done.

When I was younger, I had to dead agent questions during interviews all the time about why I quit school in eighth grade. As stated earlier, formal education is not important in the church, which prefers that all people, even children, focus their studies and life on Scientology. But of course to the outside world that would reflect poorly on my faith, so I told all sorts of half-truths, if not outright lies, from my mother homeschooling me (she did open a school later) to my going to a private school (the Sea Org, not really a school but still an education).

Even though Scientology sees itself as the authority on ethics and responsibility, obscuring the truth is built into its core. You can’t give up the details of what’s involved on the OT levels because, you are told, those who are not on them aren’t ready to receive that kind of information. They might die if I told them. No kidding. That meant if I were directly questioned about the upper levels of Scientology, I
had
to lie. It wasn’t really a lie if it was for the betterment of the church.

The day after our briefing, Juliette, Kirstie, Anne, and I went to the Celebrity Centre for our interviews with John Sweeney. A bald British man with glasses, he was already on edge when he arrived, but Tommy and Mike ridiculed and intimidated him in a way that embarrassed me. It was one thing to avoid a question and another to berate someone into not asking it.

When I sat down with Mr. Sweeney I prepared myself for the usual assaults against Scientology. [Question: “Doesn’t it cost people hundreds of thousands of dollars to practice Scientology?” Answer: “There are plenty of courses that cost as little as thirty-five dollars.” (partial truth) Question: “Do you really believe that an alien Xenu
came to earth millions of years ago?” Answer: “How about what Scientologists are doing for the planet today—like the New York detoxification program that has rid thousands of 9/11 rescuers and workers of harmful toxins they got at Ground Zero, a fact backed up by science.” (deflect)] Instead, he asked me point-blank, “Does David Miscavige hit people?”

“What?”

I wasn’t expecting that. Maybe Tommy was right about this guy—that was certainly a crazy question.

“There are allegations that David Miscavige beats people.”

I had never heard them. I could have answered just that, but instead I decided to employ my favorite defense: making a joke.

“Well, I’ve never been hit by him. Should I be insulted?”

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the best joke. Still I think it was better dead agenting than what Kirstie said, answering the same accusation about David by saying to Mr. Sweeney, “I wouldn’t ask you if you’re still molesting children.” Classic church tool.

It was Tommy and Mike, however, who heaped the most abuse on the BBC reporter, bringing up dirt they had on mistakes he’d made throughout his career and ridiculing him for being stupid and nothing but a failed reporter. At one point during the interviews he had to excuse himself and go to the bathroom because he was so upset. I couldn’t take it; there’s nothing I hate more than seeing someone be humiliated, whether a Scientologist or not. I followed him to the bathroom, where I asked through the door if he was okay. He responded, “I just need a minute.”

I was more than aware of the Fair Game policy, which stipulates that anyone against Scientology “may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.” This policy essentially allows Scientologists to punish and harass “enemies” using any and all means necessary. The church has stated that this policy was canceled, but there is an exception: “If the person is an SP, this applies.”

In this way, Tommy and Mike were just following policy, as I always stated I was. But this made my stomach turn.

I went back to talk to Tommy and Mike, who were still laughing about this poor man being in the bathroom. “What are you guys doing to him?” I said. “What you’re doing is wrong. He’s in your house. You should treat him with respect. I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any favors.”

Of course they didn’t listen to me. In fact, during the journalist’s stay in Los Angeles, Tommy bullied him far worse than I could have imagined. He had people follow the reporter—even showing up at his hotel room, though he didn’t think anyone knew where he was staying. Eventually Tommy egged him on enough that he broke the guy, who had succumbed to a screaming fit that was cleverly caught on video by the church, which posted the footage on YouTube days before the documentary aired. Mr. Sweeney, who was reprimanded by his bosses for the “unprofessional” outburst, issued his own apology, in which he said he let “the BBC down and I am ashamed.” I wish he hadn’t done that. The BBC had no idea of what this man had had to endure.

I didn’t know about any of that until later, but I didn’t need to know it to see what effect doing this documentary had on the journalist. I felt so bad about how he was treated at the Celebrity Centre that I refused to be a part of the project and never signed my release.

J
OHN
S
WEENEY’S DOCUMENTARY O
N
S
CIENTOLOGY,
which aired on May 14, 2007, oddly enough coincided with another major event happening in my life that was hard for me to handle—the very last episode of
The
King of Queens
.

Leaving that show was so difficult; it really was like ending a marriage in that a lot of history happened in the nine years we worked on it. When I looked at everything around me, the many people I knew, the many things I had achieved, they reminded me of
The King of Queens
. That was my home, a place where I felt I had finally been accepted somewhat in a business I never felt part of. My house is
The King of Queens
. My wedding and baby—
King of Queens
. Kevin’s marriage and first two babies—
King of Queens
.

It was also hard to say goodbye to a show that didn’t get canceled but just
ended
. Yes, there were reasons, first and foremost of which was Kevin’s movie career, which took off after he did
Hitch.
Kevin didn’t want to tarnish the series with its being canceled or going out with low ratings. The show was special to him and he wanted to honor that.

The show that critics called derivative and not funny enough
became the twelfth-longest-running sitcom in all of television history. No matter how many awards we didn’t win or how many times the network moved us around, our viewers were as loyal to us as Carrie and Doug were to each other; they were the ones who kept us on air, making us one of only a handful of sitcoms of that period to make it to 207 episodes. So in what was more a collective feeling than a decision, we said,
Okay, this is it, it’s time to end the show
.

And although our finale didn’t come with the typical fanfare or press coverage, the end of
The King of Queens
was no less dramatic. When Kevin and I looked up at that old piece of wood above the doorway to the set that I promised on our first show we wouldn’t see forever (but that we had looked at far longer than either of us ever imagined), we both started crying. We didn’t even need to speak; each of us knew exactly what the other was thinking:
That’s history. Our history.
I have never recovered. I miss him, our writers, the cast, and the crew every day.

Where do you go from there? I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after
The King of Queens
because it was such a big part of me. You don’t do a show for that long only to walk right into the next one. My main goal for a few years after the finale was not to go into something else that would be a disgrace to what I had just done for nine years.

In 2010, not long after I ran into CBS head Les Moonves and his wife and television personality, Julie Chen, at a party, my agent received a call about a new chat show for the network called
The Talk,
created by
Roseanne
alum Sara Gilbert as a time-slot replacement for the long-running soap
As the World Turns.
The daytime talk show was pitched to me as six female hosts who would sit around and have candid discussions about our lives as moms, wives, sisters, and working women. We would tell real stories about real relationships and real problems. That idea excited me. It was also something totally different for me, which was appealing, even though I knew that at some point I wanted to return to sitcoms. But CBS, the only network still doing traditional multi-camera sitcoms, offered me a
development deal in tandem. I was thrilled to stay in the family and said yes to
The Talk
.

The show—which premiered on October 18, 2010, with Julie, Sara, Sharon Osbourne, Holly Robinson Peete, Marissa Jaret Winokur, and me—turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined. For the first time on TV I wasn’t playing a scripted character; I was just me. And I was scared.

Initially, all of us co-hosts bonded, both on set and off. We went on outings to the zoo with our kids, hung out at one another’s houses, and got along well. We shared a lot of moments together. Things started to break down among us when I realized that the producers wanted to script the conversation between the hosts, losing any sense of “realness” to the discussions. I had thought we were going to discuss spontaneous and authentic stories. Instead, this felt manufactured. As a result, I became an “unofficial” producer. The co-hosts and producers would come to me with ideas and I would weigh them and find what I thought was relatable. An example of this came up once in a Monday morning cast and producer meeting. The producers asked us what we did that weekend. Julie mentioned that she and her husband had gone to an event at which the president was speaking. The producers thought this would be of interest. What I found to be relatable and funny was that Holly was at that same event, only her seats were in the nosebleed section, while Julie and her husband Les were somewhere in the first ten rows. Holly kept waving, unsuccessfully, to get Julie’s attention. The difference in where they were seated was what was of interest and set up for a better conversation. But while I had what I thought were good ideas and a firm grasp on what our audience could relate to, my opinions and my mouth often got me into trouble.

Celebrities often have a list of what they won’t talk about. Understandable. I never wanted to talk about Scientology, ever. But sometimes, when it came to guests on the show, it got to be ridiculous. For example, when Craig Ferguson was a guest on our Valentine’s Day show, I thought it would be fun to talk to the late-night
host about the worst gift he ever gave his wife on Valentine’s Day. The note we got back from his publicist, however, read: “Don’t talk about Craig’s wife. He doesn’t want to talk about his personal life.” “Why, is he getting divorced?” “No, they said he just doesn’t want to talk about her.” This was Craig Ferguson, not Brad Pitt, who I’m sure would have been happy to talk about his wife. As a result I ignored Craig on air because I wasn’t allowed to ask him any questions that people could relate to and I could relate to. I got tweets about it that day: “Why are you not talking to Craig?” “Why do you hate Craig?”

I thought the six of us should have real conversations on the kinds of topics that women really talk about, like how sex seriously drops off after marriage. Like, for me, I want to have sex more, but by the time eight o’clock hits, I’m too tired and think I should have done it earlier. But I don’t like daylight, so unless blackout curtains are on hand I’m out because I’m trying not to show my husband my cellulite.

That would have been a fun conversation to have on daytime television. That would have been different and a conversation Barbara Walters could
never
have on
The View.

I would want to hear that conversation. Crass, sure, but that’s the kind of thing I’m interested in hearing. Now, I understand that when you’re Julie Chen you can’t really talk about how your husband does annoying things like scratch his balls. But still…

Sharon Osbourne, the resident wacky matriarch of the show, was particularly fond of telling stories about herself on air that stretched the truth. I really loved Sharon’s balls. That she could make up a good story and not worry about it.

Sharon, being the grand dame of
The Talk,
was necessary to the show’s survival, but her crazy ways and eccentricities that played well on TV were harder to take as a co-worker. One day I might find myself in a fight with her on set (in between the camera rolling), and the next a crazily lavish present of a full-grown tree that must have cost her thousands of dollars shows up at my house with a note that would read, “I’m such a twat!” You just never knew where you stood
with Sharon. But when she told me, “I am a true friend to you,” I believed her. Having said that, while one day she was your best friend, the next she wasn’t. When I would try to ask someone about it, they would reply with, “Oh, that’s just Sharon.”

As her friend, I knew Sharon had problems with Julie. Wanting respect, not criticism, Sharon started to rail against everything from the eight a.m. planning meetings to the upfronts in New York, which she didn’t want to attend because CBS was giving her only one first-class ticket and a coach ticket. If she was going to attend the presentations, which all the networks make to advertisers, Sharon had to bring along her whole crew (hair, makeup, etc.). She also didn’t want to stay in the hotel that they were putting her up at. Sharon was so angry she told Holly and me that she was going to quit the show. As difficult as Sharon may have been, I did quite enjoy her, and personally I didn’t want anyone leaving the show the first year. She had paid her dues in her career and I felt that she deserved much of what she was asking for. I called a meeting to see if we could work something out among ourselves, pay for the upgrade and share stylists or something. But instead of working things out, Julie and Sharon got into it. I could feel the tension quickly rising between them. Sharon accused CBS of being a cheap network; for
America’s Got Talent,
NBC gave her a $50,000 budget for clothes. Julie fought back by boasting about CBS’s superior ratings. It was delightful. Our very own
Battle of the Network Stars
! And in this corner…I spoke to Julie and persuaded her to give Sharon due respect, let her skip meetings, let her take days off, make her feel important.

Sharon, Holly, and I also decided we were going to go to the network and make some changes on the set so no one individual was running us, but rather we worked as a team. We thought this was the right move. The second season was going to be better. After all it was a tough show and we all had our moments.

Out of all the women on the show, I had the most in common with Holly, as we were in similar situations—we didn’t have husbands to pay the bills like Ozzy Osbourne or Les Moonves. Holly and I were the breadwinners of our families, so we had a different
perspective that was probably more in line with Sara’s. But unlike Sara, Holly and I weren’t the type to keep quiet when there was a problem. Sara, although the creator of the show and a producer, had zero power and didn’t like to make waves. She worked for the boss’s wife. A vital point that one must understand if one wants to keep one’s job.

My mother, sitting in my dressing room while we discussed our plan to meet with the CBS heads, wagged her finger no.

“Ma, stop,” I said. “We’re going to get it all out in the open. It’ll be good.”

She just shook her head no and said, “You are so stupid if you think this is a great plan.”

We had gone through three executive producers before the end of the first season. And to welcome our new EP, we decided to all meet at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Before the “Go, team!” dinner I had talked to Julie on the phone for an hour about the terrible prospect of Sharon leaving. I knew she was serious about it because she had pitched Holly and me for an NBC show Howie Mandel wanted to do. But CBS really felt like family, so I wanted to make
The Talk
work. “Meet with her an hour before our dinner so that you can massage her a little,” I said to Julie. “We really don’t want her to quit.”

Heartened by the fact that Julie listened to my advice, I decided to send an email out to all the hosts the night before the dinner. I thought this was as good a time as any to kind of clear the air.

“Looking forward to seeing everybody,” I wrote. “It’s going to be a new wave. It’s going to be positive. So, know that.”

And I was feeling positive when I walked into the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel the next night to find Sharon and Julie deep in conversation. I went to sit down, but Julie said, “Oh, we need more time.”

“Sure, of course. Of course,” I said, because I was in on the side deal with Julie. So I went to the bar, where I waited until the rest of the cast and our new executive producer showed up. Then we
proceeded to the table, where we made small talk for about five minutes before Sharon answered one of my pleasantries with a serious attack.

“Who do you think you are, sending an email like that to everybody?” she asked, staring me down from across the table.