Seth Rogen is recalling an experience that could have ended up super badly.
The “Fabelmans” star detailed in a newly resurfaced 2021 SiriusXM interview with Howard Stern that Tom Cruise tried to pitch Scientology to him and Judd Apatow in 2006. According to Rogen, Cruise compared the media treatment of Black supremacist, anti-Semitic religious leader Louis Farrakhan to how Scientology is marred in the press.
“A few hours into the meeting, the Scientology stuff comes up,” Rogen recalled of the past discussion with Cruise. “He said, ‘I think the pharmaceutical industry is making me look bad. You should see what they do to my friend Louis Farrakhan.'”
Rogen continued, “I’ll never forget the wording he used: ‘It’s like with Scientology. If you let me just tell you what it was really about, just give me like 20 minutes to, like, really just tell you what it was about. You would say no fucking way. No fucking way.’ I remember being like, the wording was like, is that a good thing to be saying?”
The “Superbad” co-writer added that he and Apatow looked at each other during the “very loaded moment” and hoped they would be able to “come out of this” without repercussions from turning down Scientology.
“I don’t know if I am — I’m generally a weak-willed, weak-minded person — I would assume on the grand scale of people. If they got him, what chance do I have?” Rogen said. “Thank God Judd was like, ‘I think we’re good, let’s just talk about movies and stuff.’ Woof. Dodged that bullet.”
The SiriusXM clip has been making the rounds on social media after 2023 Golden Globes host Jerrod Carmichael joked that the three Golden Globes Cruise returned should be traded in for “the safe return” of Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige, who has not been seen publicly for 15 years.
Cruise previously returned his three Golden Globes in 2021 in protest of the lack of diversity in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Globes host Carmichael said during the 2023 show, “Backstage, I found these three Golden Globes awards that Tom Cruise returned. Look, I’m just the host briefly, or whatever, but I have a pitch: Maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige.”
David Miscavige was the best man in Cruise’s wedding with Katie Holmes. Former Scientology member and current activist Leah Remini filed a missing persons report for Shelly Miscavige in 2013.
“In 2013, after I left Scientology, I filed a missing person’s report with the LAPD on Shelly,” Remini tweeted in November 2022. “By the time I filed the report, it had been nearly eight years since I had seen or heard from Shelly. Hours after I filed the missing person’s report, the case was closed, and the LAPD announced to the press that they had found Shelly.”
Remini continued, “When I asked where Shelly was, Tommy Davis, Tom Cruise and David Miscavige’s henchman told me, ‘You don’t have the fucking rank to ask about Shelly.’ I was subjected to months of cruel interrogations and reprogramming for the ‘high crime’ of asking where Shelly was.”
Following the Globes, Remini tweeted, “Thank you Jerrod Carmichael! Where is Shelly??”
