Jada Pinkett Smith is speaking out about her beliefs after Leah Remini claimed the actress is a “long-time” Scientologist.
Remini, whose Emmy-winning A&E series “Scientology and the Aftermath” follows individuals’ harrowing experiences leaving the organization, has been vocal about calling out supposed celebrity Scientologists, including Elisabeth Moss and Jada Pinkett Smith.
“I know Jada’s in. I know Jada’s in. She’s been in Scientology a long time,” Remini told The Daily Beast Saturday. “I never saw Will [Smith] there, but I saw Jada at the Celebrity Centre. They opened up a Scientology school, and have since closed it. But Jada, I had seen her at the Scientology Celebrity Centre all the time.”
Early Tuesday morning, Pinkett Smith posted a string of tweets about her religious practices. While she admits to having studied Scientology’s main text, Dianetics, she denies being a Scientologist.
I recently lit Shabbat candles with Rabbi Bentley at Temple Sinai... but I am not Jewish.
Scientology rumors have long floated around the Smiths.
In her book, Troublemaker, Remini recalls being at Tom Cruise’s house with the Smiths when a game of adult hide-and-seek unfolded. Pinkett Smith quashed the story while on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live” over the summer, saying it was just a game for the kids.
Remini told The Daily Beast differently.
“I had hoped that she had left [Scientology], but this was the tell-tale sign that she was still in,” she said, then referenced the Cohen interview. “He goes, ‘Isn’t that weird, to play tag?’ and she goes, ‘No, the kids were there.’ That was untrue. Bullshit. There were no kids there. I was like, ‘Okay, alright, you’re gonna do that? More power to ya.’”
Almost a decade ago, the couple opened New Village Leadership Academy, a private, “non-religious” elementary school, in Calabasas, California, that implemented the use of Study Tech, a teaching methodology devised by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Pinkett Smith denied the institution, which closed its doors in 2013, was a Scientology school.
“You don’t have to be Jewish to be a friend of Steven Spielberg. You don’t have to be a Muslim to be a friend of Muhammad Ali. And you don’t have to be a Scientologist to be a friend of Tom Cruise,” he told the New York Daily News in 2008. “I am a Christian. I am a student of all religions. And I respect all people and all paths.”
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