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This is the backstory behind this ..... read the full story with comments at Tony's blog http://tonyortega.org/2013/07/19/stacy-dawn-murphy-one-year-after-her-death-still-no-answers/#more-8600
Katie Holmes allegedly wrote up Leah Remini over J-Lo seat-change request at wedding: Favorite People
Jennifer Lopez performs at Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time at Hyde Park in London on Sunday. An incident involving the singer and her friend Leah Remini at Tom Cruise's wedding has come to light after news broke of Remini's defection from Scientology. (The Associated Press)
It might have been something as simple as a seat-change request at a wedding – albeit the infamous nuptials of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes — that sent Leah Remini on her path of defection from Scientology, a sordid saga involving Kirstie Alley, Jennifer Lopez and "Crash" director Paul Haggis.
Remini's sister, Nicole, has been shedding light in various interviews this week why the "King of Queens" star fled the church after 37 years. The picture she's painted has offered a behind-the-scenes look into the church and the bizarre interactions of its A-Listers and management.
On Thursday, Nicole Remini gave an in-depth interview to Tony Ortega, the former Village Voice editor who broke the news of Leah's defection last week on his Scientology-related website The Underground Bunker. In it, Nicole speaks of how their mother joined the religion through a boyfriend when she and Leah were little kids, how they joined the small Scientology armada called Sea Org and how they fled for dry land after being threatened with the church's bleak prison at sea.
As the years went by, Nicole eventually drifted away from the church while Leah became more involved and landed a high-profile sitcom gig that put her in contact with the stars of Scientology. Nicole recalls visiting her sister in SoCal after having moved to Minnesota: “I went into Celebrity Centre one time and Tom Cruise was doing jumping jacks and stretching, right where everyone was walking. Like he owned the place."
Leah became increasingly concerned about Cruise's prominence in the church. “When Leah was sec-checked, one of the things they asked her about was whether she was going to be a danger to Tom,” Nicole says.
The sec-checking — intense interrogations while hooked up to an e-meter — occurred after returning from Cruise-Holmes nuptials in November 2006 at castle outside Rome. It was there Leah caused a scene when she asked about the whereabouts of Miscavige's wife, Shelly. She had vanished months earlier and has since been seen only once — at her father's funeral in 2007. Critics of the church believe she's being held at a super-secret Scientology headquarters in the L.A. area.
At the wedding, Leah asked Tommy Davis, the son of Anne Archer and a church spokesman, where Shelly was. “You don’t have the (expletive) rank to ask about Shelly,” came the reply. Leah ran into further trouble questioning Cruise's relationship with Miscavige, who joined the newlyweds on their honeymoon.
But the main drama came when Leah's good friend J-Lo asked if the actress could have her seat assignment changed so they could sit together.
A Hollywood publicist “took exception to Leah’s request and complained to Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise that Leah was causing a scene,” Nicole explains, a move that ended with four "knowledge reports" being filed — basically church members snitching on others for questionable behavior. One of them was apparently written by Holmes herself.
“They wrote that Leah was an embarrassment to Scientology,” Nicole says. “They said she ruined the wedding. All she did was ask to change her seat.”
Alley, who's reportedly been working with church officials behind the scenes to manage the drama after Remini's defection, also wrote Remini up years later after the latter tweeted Haggis. The director-screenwriter foreshadowed Remini's own move when he left Scientology in 2011, which brought a wave of bad PR.
These knowledge reports played a part in the discipline Remini later faced and her decision to leave the church and criticize its leadership.
“Leah is a righter of wrongs," Nicole says. "These things are not right. If things were going the way they should be going, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Remini's sister, Nicole, has been shedding light in various interviews this week why the "King of Queens" star fled the church after 37 years. The picture she's painted has offered a behind-the-scenes look into the church and the bizarre interactions of its A-Listers and management.
On Thursday, Nicole Remini gave an in-depth interview to Tony Ortega, the former Village Voice editor who broke the news of Leah's defection last week on his Scientology-related website The Underground Bunker. In it, Nicole speaks of how their mother joined the religion through a boyfriend when she and Leah were little kids, how they joined the small Scientology armada called Sea Org and how they fled for dry land after being threatened with the church's bleak prison at sea.
As the years went by, Nicole eventually drifted away from the church while Leah became more involved and landed a high-profile sitcom gig that put her in contact with the stars of Scientology. Nicole recalls visiting her sister in SoCal after having moved to Minnesota: “I went into Celebrity Centre one time and Tom Cruise was doing jumping jacks and stretching, right where everyone was walking. Like he owned the place."
Leah became increasingly concerned about Cruise's prominence in the church. “When Leah was sec-checked, one of the things they asked her about was whether she was going to be a danger to Tom,” Nicole says.
The sec-checking — intense interrogations while hooked up to an e-meter — occurred after returning from Cruise-Holmes nuptials in November 2006 at castle outside Rome. It was there Leah caused a scene when she asked about the whereabouts of Miscavige's wife, Shelly. She had vanished months earlier and has since been seen only once — at her father's funeral in 2007. Critics of the church believe she's being held at a super-secret Scientology headquarters in the L.A. area.
At the wedding, Leah asked Tommy Davis, the son of Anne Archer and a church spokesman, where Shelly was. “You don’t have the (expletive) rank to ask about Shelly,” came the reply. Leah ran into further trouble questioning Cruise's relationship with Miscavige, who joined the newlyweds on their honeymoon.
But the main drama came when Leah's good friend J-Lo asked if the actress could have her seat assignment changed so they could sit together.
A Hollywood publicist “took exception to Leah’s request and complained to Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise that Leah was causing a scene,” Nicole explains, a move that ended with four "knowledge reports" being filed — basically church members snitching on others for questionable behavior. One of them was apparently written by Holmes herself.
“They wrote that Leah was an embarrassment to Scientology,” Nicole says. “They said she ruined the wedding. All she did was ask to change her seat.”
Alley, who's reportedly been working with church officials behind the scenes to manage the drama after Remini's defection, also wrote Remini up years later after the latter tweeted Haggis. The director-screenwriter foreshadowed Remini's own move when he left Scientology in 2011, which brought a wave of bad PR.
These knowledge reports played a part in the discipline Remini later faced and her decision to leave the church and criticize its leadership.
“Leah is a righter of wrongs," Nicole says. "These things are not right. If things were going the way they should be going, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
‘The TomKat Project’ arrives at the moment of spoof with salute to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes
Author Brandon Ogborn's takeoff on paparazzis' favorite celebrity couple stars Walt Delaney and Julie Dahlinger
Comments (1)BY JOE DZIEMIANOWICZ / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
FRIDAY, JULY 19, 2013, 2:00 AM
'The Tomkat Project's' Walt Delaney savors his couch moment as Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes aren’t together in real life — but thanks to the magic of the stage, TomKat is back.
The severed super-couple will reunite next month in “The TomKat Project,” a chronicle of their courtship, marriage and divorce in all of its couch-bouncing, Matt Lauer-lashing, Scientology-scented glory, starring two actors who don’t look like Cruise or Holmes.
Still purring from a spring run in Chicago, the show is a main attraction at the loopy and low-budget New York International Fringe Festival. The event runs Aug. 9-25, and tickets go on sale for shows today at fringenyc.org.
“ ‘The TomKat Project’ is one of the most-buzzed-about shows at FringeNYC this year,” says Ron Lasko, a spokesman for the festival. “After becoming a critically acclaimed cult hit in Chicago, we are thrilled to be premiering it in New York.”
The spiky spoof is the brain child of Brandon Ogborn, a Chicago writer and actor with a day job at Trader Joe’s who became intrigued with everyone’s obsession (media included) with celebrity and what it’s like to live in a fishbowl of fame.
'Tomkat Project's' Julie Dahlinger channels Katie Holmes.
Ogborn says he wrote the show “to make a few of my friends laugh” — but in the process had a serious realization about “looking at celebrities as human beings instead of objects.”
“But,” he adds, “that makes me sound like a d—. It’s just a comedy.”
Actors in “The TomKat Project” portray multiple characters. Besides Tom and Katie, Oprah Winfrey makes an appearance, along with Scientology front man David Miscavige, Matt Lauer, Scarlett Johansson, entertainment lawyer Bert Fields and Nicole Kidman. Suri Cruise pops in briefly, too.
Ogborn, who acts as narrator, raises the curtain on his show by declaring: “The following scenes are based on rumor, gossip, hearsay, theory, fantasy, lies and, when appropriate, Wikipedia.”
It’s certainly a mix of fact and fiction, but when “The TomKat Project” puts real-life dialogue into the script, an actor holds up a sign that reads: “This dialogue is verbatim.”
Brandon Ogborn, author of ‘The TomKat Project,’ has a sign to alert the audience for dialogue from real life.
To ready for their starring roles, fellow Chicago residents Walt Delaney, 28, and Julie Dahlinger, 30, did their homework. Delaney gorged on screenings of “Rain Man,” “Risky Business,” “Top Gun,” “Jerry Maguire” and all of the “Mission Impossible” franchise.
“I have seen ‘Cocktail’ more times than I care to admit publicly,” he says. “I also watched everything YouTube had to offer by way of interviews and talk show appearances. I’ve watched that Matt Lauer interview 50 times. I also really got a lot on who he is as a person from his appearance on ‘Inside the Actors Studio.’ ”
Dahlinger dug as deep for her role in the play, which she describes as “an equal opportunity lover and destroyer” — fitting, since her character can be seen as either a pawn or an opportunist.
“I’ve watched everything that Katie has done,” says Dahlinger, reeling off titles like “Go,” “Pieces of April” and “The Romantics.” “And,” she continues, “every season of ‘Dawson’s Creek.’ My eyes were bleeding from the repetition.”
Neither actor physically resembles his or her character. He’s taller than Tom, at 6 feet — and less toned. She’s shorter than Katie, at 5-feet-7 — and less willowy. But they worked to capture key traits of TomKat.
JEAN-PAUL PELISSIER/REUTERS
Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise during their run as a Hollywood couple, at a premiere for his movie ‘War of the Worlds’
For Delaney, that means going dental and mental. “Tom has this crazy, maniacal smile and supersized exuberance,” he says. “There’s an odd incessant laughter at everything.”
Dahlinger focused on Holmes’ lopsided grin, becoming an expert in facial musculature. “The right side of Katie’s face is her dominant side,” says Dahlinger. “For the first month and a half of doing the show, I’d have to stretch my face after rehearsals.”
She also worked to pick up Holmes’ measured speech pattern after her marriage. “She became so demure even when she was excited,” says Dahlinger. “Even things like, ‘Tom’s amazing!’ came out softly. Her words land gentle, like a hot-air balloon touching down.”
In keeping with the Fringe Festival milieu, “The TomKat Project” is a bare-bones production. There’s no set or costumes, just a handful of props — a baseball cap, aviator sunglasses à la Maverick — and music cues summoning Cruise-y hits like “Top Gun.”
The downtown run of “TomKat” neatly coincides with the anniversary of the Cruise divorce — and a year later, the ex-couple is still fascinating, says pop-culture expert and Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson.
“The shelf life hasn’t expired,” he says, adding that celebrity obsession isn’t new and isn’t going away.
“At any given time, there’s about 75 really big celebrities who everybody knows from their movies or their music,” he says. “This famous family of 75 is like a mainstream pop-cultural glue. There’s real value in that.”
“The TomKat Project” runs Aug. 20-24. Players Theatre, 115 MacDougal St. Tickets: $15 fringenyc.org or (866) 468-7619.
jdziemianowicz@nydailynews.com
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/cruise-missile-tomkat-project-strikes-fringe-fest-article-1.1402485#ixzz2ZXrFcmB5
Let The Sliming Begin
JULY 19, 2013 BY 22 COMMENTS
The Dark Side of the Radical Church of Scientology is revealing itself piece by piece.Today, sort-of-celebrity Stacy Francis took a cheap shot at Nicole Remini after she spoke up in support of her sister.
And with that the sliming of Nicole has begun. In a non-sequitur, offensive tweet, Francis put on display the level of hatred the church of Miscavige expects from those seeking to prove themselves “on the team.” One is supposed to “take off the gloves” when someone has been labeled “fair game” (meaning “connected to someone who is no longer toeing the party line).
Francis decided that throwing a sucker punch of alleging someone has an eating disorder would somehow impugn Nicole’s credibility and enhance her own. But, if this is an untrue allegation, it’s disgusting. If it’s true, its equally disgusting. Either way she showed herself to be ready to stoop to the lowest levels. Of course, after proclaiming her fearlessness, she quickly erased her offensive tweet, but not before it was caught by Radar Online.
“Stacy deleted the tweets, but in messages recovered by RadarOnline.com, she writes, “People are so shady!! Say it if you got the nerve! Say it! don’t be cryptic!! Get the balls to say it to me! AND!ONLY IF YOU KNOW THE TRUTH!…DON’T BE A SHIT STARTER @nicoleremini YOU BETTER NOT BE TWEETIN ABOUT ME! Oh and nice you are friends again with your OWN SISTER Don’t do it…DEAR SELF>>>>>>GO TO BED! Dealing with bulimic crazy people won’t help you tonight.”
With her ill-advised tweet Stacy Francis did get some buzz – perhaps she is trying to get some attention for the purported reality series she is going to be in — but it seems what she really stirred up was more the buzz of angry wasps. As they say, people in glass houses should not throw stones.
Stacy has apparently pissed off a lot of people as a number of them were outraged enough to send in information they thought should be known that DID have relevance to her reliability. We are not even going into her repeated and well-known emotional meltdowns on The X Factor.
One source who knows Stacy Francis quite well said: “Stacy is an opportunist, if you can help her or her career, she turns up the charm, but Stacy is for Stacy. If you can’t or won’t help her, she will get street and turn her back on you”. The source went on to explain that Francis had asked Leah Remini to be the godmother of her second baby (as a result of a widelyreported affair with Bishop Noel Jones). Remini was the only one at the hospital for Stacy when she had her baby. Some friend Stacy turned out to be….
Stacy Francis first appeared on anyone’s radar screen when she serenaded Tom Cruise in a private party aboard the Freewinds arranged by David Miscavige. Francis later reported to friends that “Jessica Feshbach/Rodriguez/Davis had kept her away from “Tom’s camp” because she was suspected of not having pure intentions towards Cruise.”
Francis is walking the plank. She is trying to curry favor by showing her “loyalty” but she will find the end of the plank as soon as she is no longer considered valuable. She has no real status of her own. She should be very careful as she will soon become an easy scapegoat, to be thrown under the next bus.
Others have told us she has had a rocky history with the church. At one point she was getting special attention because of her friendship with Brandy Norwood. Then Brandy got frightened by the church, Francis became superfluous and Jessica F/R/D took over the “handling” – attending basketball games to “accidentally run into Brandy” and inviting her to Tom Cruise’s house (but NOT inviting Francis). Reportedly Francis flew into a rage and called Jessica a bitch as a result.
Insiders who were at Celebrity Center say they basically dumped Francis and she had her get services at Flag because “she was always fighting with someone at CC. Then she would call Leah if she got into trouble with CC staff and Leah would come to her defense. So they didn’t want Francis there anymore. Stacy is known for her outbursts, but now they will use her for their own needs. Stacy will probably now be back in Tom’s good graces, and ‘enemies of Leah’ (her former friends in the church) will now befriend Stacy and claim that Leah had ‘third partied’ Stacy.” Francis likely considers dissing Nicole and Leah a small price to pay for being back in the spotlight and part of the “in crowd” once again.
I hope Leah had all her former “friends” and employees sign non-disclosure agreements (like virtually every celebrity in the world does). She seems like she is smart enough to have done so. In that case, to paraphrase Kirstie Alley – revenge is a dish best served cold…
Francis should be concerned that her “good guy” status isn’t going to last long. She will be dumped as soon as she is no longer useful again and will probably be “dead-agented” quickly as a “squirrel” because she still attends a Christian church. For PR purposes this is “acceptable” but anyone who is in the church knows this is considered to be “mixing practices” and a complete failure to “Keep Scientology Working.” She will be labeled a squirrel in a New York minute.
The glass house Francis is currently walking through has VERY thin glass and a very unstable frame. If she sneezes wrong, it will instantly collapse on her. When it does, where is she going to turn?
This is the pattern of dead-agenting, disconnection and control preached and practiced by the church of Miscavige. It bears no resemblance to the fundamental principles of Scientology — the mutant monster of a church is crushing all the good contained in the subject beneath a relentless avalanche of crap.
Champions of human rights? Only in their PR statements…
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