Elisabeth Moss discusses being a Scientologist

The New Yorker

In a New Yorker profile timed for the release of Apple TV+'s Shining Girls, interviewer Michael Schulman asked Moss was asked about her controversial religion. “I don’t want to come off as being cagey,” she said. “If you and I met, just hanging out as friends, I’m, like, an open book about it.” But, she added, “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.” Schulman responded that people are already distracted by it. Smiling, she replied: “People can obviously hold in their mind whatever they want to, and I can’t control that. If it’s not that, it’s going to be something else....It’s 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. I think that’s the thing that is probably the most misunderstood.” Asked how Scientology has helped her as she grew up, Moss said: “Communication is something that I obviously use so much, not only in my job but in my interpersonal relationships as well. That is probably one of the No. 1 basic things that I grew up learning and grew up using and use every day: the power of just being able to listen to somebody, of making somebody feel heard, of not belittling them for what they think or believe, even if you think it’s wrong." Moss also cleared up a story in which she was reported to have walked out of the 2017 Television Critics Association Awards when ex-Scientologist Leah Remini won an award for Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. "I went to the bathroom,” Moss said. “I wish it was more exciting than that.”