‘10 Things I Hate About You’ Star Andrew Keegan Comments on Reports That He Ran a Cult

10 Things I Hate About You star Andrew Keegan refuted claims that he once ran a cult during his appearance on Monday’s episode of Pod Meets World (via Page Six).

For a decade, speculation has swirled that Keegan, whose other credits include 7th Heaven and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, started a so-called “religion” out of an old church in Venice, CA. In 2016, Page Six reported that Keegan and his cohorts had begun a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to purchase the building that housed Full Circle, described as a “spiritual community.” Full Circle shuttered in 2017 due to financial issues.

On Pod Meets World, Keegan refuted claims that Full Circle was a cult, and explained why he moved the community into The Rose Temple, which previously housed a Protestant church and then a Buddhist temple.

Explaining that he “really got immersed in the culture and the community” of Los Angeles soon after moving there, Keegan admitted he started hanging out with “hippie types” who began to influence his thinking.

“I was connected with some folks, and we had this opportunity, this old Rose Temple,” Keegan explained. “It was sitting there empty, and we were like, ‘Yo why don’t we just get some people together and let’s open this place up?'”

Keegan called any reports of his running a cult “clickbait central,” instead telling the hosts that he and his friends intended to “get people together” and “do some positive things for the community.”

“We really just got together, and we did a Sunday thing and did almost a thousand events in three years and it was actually really hard, and it was really beneficial to a lot of people,” Keegan said. “There was no doctrine,” he assured.

However, it soon became too expensive to run the organization, and Keegan was forced to disband the community. “[It] was kind of looking back, was insane,” he said. “I was putting down thousands of, tens of thousands of dollars, and we opened it up, and we spent three years, and we did build an amazing friend group.”

Keegan continued: “So for all intents and purposes, it was just a really cool community center for a bunch of people in Venice for years…Again, it wasn’t something with such a specific agenda. At the time it just kind of evolved from a group of people.”

Keegan has denied in the past that Full Circle was a cult, telling Page Six in 2016, “We put our heart into it. There’s no argument, no ulterior motive. It’s purely love for a space and for a community. Maybe it’s too good for people, though, and it’s too much.”

It seems much of the speculation around Keegan’s activity arose after a Vice profile regarding the movement. In that piece, Keegan explained why he named the community Full Circle.

"Synchronicity. Time. That's what it's all about. Whatever, the past, some other time,” he said. “It's a circle; in the center is now. That's what it's about…We're very, very aware of the shift that's happening in the mind and the heart, and everybody is on that love agenda.”