UPDATE: YouTube Blocks Anti-Scientology Interview with Actor Jason Beghe

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“If Scientology is real, then something’s ****ed up. It ain’t deliverin’ what is promised, that’s for goddamn sure.” And with that, actor Jason Beghe joins a growing chorus of critics speaking out online about the religion.

 

In this three-minute video “tease” currently up on YouTube—with a two-hour interview coming to YouTube from Scientology investigator Mark Bunker this weekend—Beghe, a 48-year-old actor with a long list of credits including roles on CSI, Cane and Veronica Mars, outs himself as a 12-year follower of Scientology who has left for a variety of reasons.

 

 

 

After reaching the upper-level status of “OTV” and spending $1 million on courses and auditing sessions—the high-priced system of self-improvement training Scientology calls the “Bridge to Total Freedom”—Beghe and his wife got out. They  even received a refund of nearly $70,000 for courses they’d paid for and hadn’t taken yet.

 

In the upcoming video interview with Bunker, Beghe says Scientology preaches personal empowerment but is ultimately destructive.

 

"It’s very, very dangerous for your spiritual, psychological and mental, emotional health and evolution. I think it stunts your evolution,” says Beghe (pronounced Beh-GAY).

 

The actor also talked to Village Voiceeditor Tony Ortega about his disillusionment with Scientology. He hinted that other celebrities, including Kirstie Alley, whom he called a close friend, could be thinking of leaving the religion. Tom Cruise, said Beghe, had distanced himself from it for many years, but after his divorce from Nicole Kidman was brought back into the fold by Scientology leader David Miscavige.

 

Beghe claims that members are rewarded for recruiting celebrities. He also said he had personal knowledge of how celebrities’ “ethics” and “auditing” files were breached by other Scientologists who gossiped openly about the contents of the confessional documents.

 

In an interview with Roger Friedman of Fox411 online this week, the actor reveals that he first became interested in Scientology during an acting class taught by Milton Katselas, one of the church's longtime members, and was introduced to his first courses by Bodhi Elfman (husband of actress Jenna).

 

Beghe's interviews this week (he's also sitting down with TV's Inside Edition) are the latest in a series of critical swipes against the Church of Scientology. In January, an embarrassing promotional video of Cruise gushing about his devotion to Scientology was leaked to YouTube. That was followed by other videos showing church conventions that looked like sales rallies promoting “new editions” of books by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (who died in the 1980s) and another video of Cruise doing his Risky Business dance moves (awkwardly) at a lavish birthday party for him thrown by Miscavige on the church’s yacht, the Freewinds.

 

Beghe says he is speaking out now because he wants to help others see the light on the damaging aspects of Scientology. “I don’t have an agenda. Right now I’m trying to help,” he said. “It ain’t a joke for me. This is bad stuff.”