Six years after giving an insane interview in which she waxed lyrical about the Church of Scientology, Orange Is the New Black actress Laura Prepon has revealed she is now a defector.
“It’s no longer part of my life,” she said in an interview with People magazine, released on Tuesday, adding that she left the highly secretive church five years ago after becoming a mom.
In 2015, Prepon did an interview with Celebrity, a magazine affiliated with the Church of Scientology, that contained what IndieWire described as “a fairly mind-blowing series of rants about the awesomeness of Scientology.”
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She said the church’s controversial auditing process had “stripped away all of this charge, false ideas, decisions and mis-emotions that were affecting me” and made her realize that her acting career didn’t define her.
“It’s my job and it’s very important to me, but, when I have huge wins in session, and when you really cognate that you are a thetan and you have a mind and body, and that the MEST universe does not control you—it puts things into perspective,” she said in the head-spinning, jargon-heavy interview. “It takes the weight off you and things become very easy.”
The religion, she said at the time, made her less stressed and aided her acting. “In my life, things have become much easier, I’m not affected like I used to be,” she said, recalling one experience when an “amazing actor” commented on Prepon’s ability to keep cool in stressful situations. “I take that as such a compliment and testament to the auditing I have done.”
However, Prepon, who also starred in That ’70s Show, revealed on Tuesday that she quietly left the church shortly after giving that gushing interview.
Prepon said she has always been an open-minded person, after being raised both Catholic and Jewish and studying Chinese meridian theory. But, in cryptic comments that didn’t directly address her reasons for leaving the church, she said her decision coincided with becoming a mother with husband Ben Foster, who is not a Scientologist.
The couple has two kids together, a 4-year-old girl and a 16-month-old boy. When she became a new mom, Prepon says she was “riddled” with anxiety that she had never experienced before.
“My friends who were mothers with older kids said, ‘Laura, this is a phase, you’ll move on and then it will be something different.’” Prepon said. That advice then transcended into other parts of her life, she added. “We’re all evolving. I always see that with my kids.”
“If motherhood has taught me anything so far, it’s that something can work out for a period of time and then you move on and evolve from that,” she said.
She and Foster have turned to other types of spirituality, like daily meditation, she told People.
Unlike other high-profile Scientology exiles like Leah Remini, Prepon did not divulge any inner secrets of the church or criticize its controversial practices. The church continues to count other celebs among its devotees, like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Elisabeth Moss.
Read it at People
