Cape Town – Leah Remini headlines the Crime and Investigation channel’s (DStv 170) Twisted Faith week which focuses on themes of cults and twisted faith.

The actress who is a former scientologist is host of the Emmy award winning documentary series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

Ahead of the third season of her series Remini investigates the Christian denomination Jehovah’s Witnesses in a special episode that will air on Sunday, 18 November at 18:20 on (DStv 170).

What prompted Leah and her team to look into the religion was the requests they got from people on social media to look into Jehovah’s Witnesses.

“So, we asked A+E if we could use one of the Scientology episodes to let these people speak because we felt that we had a responsibility to listen to people who are reaching out to us and A+E graciously allowed us to do that,” Leah tells Channel24 during a telephone interview.

Speaking about the challenges that they face in bringing a programme like this to television Leah says the main one is getting people to watch it.

“The only challenge is having people watch and listen. Like Scientology they won’t watch anything that looks at their organisation. Scientologists don’t watch or read any books about Scientology and Jehovah’s Witnesses are very similar in that.”

She continues; “They are taught that anybody speaking out on it is an evil apostate. The people who we are speaking to have been Jehovah’s Witnesses their whole lives. So the challenge is trying to break people free of thinking that they are literally going to die if they watch a programme like this. People have been offended by us saying that but if you just do some research - not allowing any critical questioning into your belief system is, I am very sorry to say, a cult mentality.”

A tremendous amount or research goes into the show according to Leah, who says that they have many producers who vet the material.

Asked whether they will be looking into other religions she says that they receive a lot of emails from people asking them to look into other faiths. Leah is working on a number of different projects with A+E.

She elaborates: “I look forward to doing those things. It is not just about extreme religious beliefs. I am interested in other social issues like discrimination, ageism, and homophobia – in general these are the stories that I also want to tell. Unfortunately there are too many extremist organisations that are creating people that are judging too harshly the rest of the world and cutting themselves off from being empathetic.”

SCIENTOLOGY AND THE AFTERMATH SEASON 3



Season 3 of her award winning documentary premieres on Crime and Investigation in January 2019.

About the new season Leah says they are hoping that “the IRS sees that Scientology does not deserves tax exempt status.”

“It is using millions of dollars as they have for decades to harass, bully and silence those who are speaking out against them. We are following the money this season.”

She continues: “Hoping that this will be our last season we want to hopefully expose enough of the money and how it’s being misused and this should be a concern to the IRS and the government. We need to start educating our local police on how to deal with people in cults and I am hoping that we can affect some change in the organisation and the people.”