Elisabeth Moss is one of the best working actresses out there today. She’s also one of Scientology’s most notorious members, and in an interview with the New Yorker, the Mad Men star was unusually open about the religion that has been compared to a cult.
“I don’t want to come off as being cagey. If you and I met, just hanging out as friends, I’m, like, an open book about it,” Moss said when the topic was brought up. “I don’t want people to be distracted by something when they’re watching me. I want them to be seeing the character. I feel like, when actors reveal too much of their lives, I’m sometimes watching something and I’m going, ‘Oh, I know that she just broke up with that person,’ or, ‘I know that she loves to do hot yoga,’ or whatever it is.”
Moss called Scientology, whose other famous members include Tom Cruise, Nancy Cartwright from The Simpsons, and formerly Laura Prepon, “misunderstood” and “not really a closed-off religion. It’s a place that is very open to, like, welcoming in somebody who wants to learn more about it” (whether you allegedly want to or not).
Later in the profile, the Her Smell star was asked about an incident at the 2017 Television Critics Association awards when she reportedly left the room after Leah Remini won for her anti-Scientology documentary series. “I went to the bathroom,” she said. “I wish it was more exciting than that.” Moss also commented on the rumors that she swore during her Emmys acceptance speech for The Handmaid’s Tale because, as a former-Scientology member told the Hollywood Reporter at the time, “Scientologists are urged to communicate with ‘average people,’ and to do so effectively you have to ‘go down the tone scale.’ So they all use ‘f*ck, f*ck, f*ck’ every time they talk.”
When I asked Moss about the story, she said, “That pissed me off. That was a really, really big moment for me, and it was a big moment for my mom and me. My mom, who has supported me through the years and been such an incredible mother to both me and my brother. And to tell a lie like that, about that — I didn’t deserve that, and it was wrong.”
You can read the rest of the profile here.
(Via the New Yorker)