Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology

by Leah Remini

  “You asshole! I thought you were going to be my buddy. And instead you complain to my agent that I’m harassing you? What kind of dick fuck…”

  John told me to shut up and went on to say that he never said anything like that to my agent. He explained that he had called Natalie’s office the day before to confirm the appointment and let her know there would be more people in the room so that I’d be prepared. He had told her assistant what I had done to get back in the room with him.

  “Look,” he said, “your agent said that because you had the balls to call me. And I’m telling you now, I don’t want you to change, Leah. Don’t listen to her or people like her. You did what your heart told you to do. And I hope you always do.”

  “Thank you, John,” I said.

  “No problem.”

  “Sorry about calling you an asshole.”

  “No worries.”

  “And a dick.”

  “Okay, honey, I got to go.”

  “And a fu—Hello?”

  Okay, I guess he had to go.

  But Head of the Class wasn’t going any further.

  Still, he made good on his promise—that he would keep me in mind for any part he thought I’d be right for. He was my champion, calling me once a week for auditions, where invariably I got nervous as soon as I got in front of the producers.

  “Don’t turn into an asshole when you get into the room,” John would say while walking me down a hallway in the studio for my audition.

  “You’re the asshole.”

  “You get crazy when you get in there. You get weird. And you start rambling. I want you to shut the fuck up,” he said, right before opening the door to the room where the producers were waiting. As soon as we stepped inside, his entire demeanor shifted. Beaming a huge smile at the suits, he said, “Hello. This is Leah Remini. You are going to love her.”

  Well, they didn’t love me. Instead, what I got from that audition and dozens if not hundreds more was “It’s not going any further,” and an all-new rejection: “They went another way.”

  Apparently my car wasn’t going to go “any further” either. Side note: When the Ford Motor credit guy tells you that you are behind in payments ninety days and that they are going to repossess your car, they mean it. Despite the fact that you went out of your way to make them laugh. My car was repossessed shortly thereafter making getting to auditions, where I would lose roles, all that much harder.

  Each time I went to an audition my mom would say, “I know you’re gonna get this part,” and each time I had to come home and tell her that I didn’t. That we were going to eat Taco Bell again for dinner. That we couldn’t buy furniture. While my mother never discouraged me, it broke my heart having to face up to this failure in her eyes. It killed me that I couldn’t help my family, and that we were living this way.

  I understood this failure of not landing any of the roles I auditioned for to be 100 percent my fault. According to Scientology, I either wasn’t applying the technology I was learning well enough or I wasn’t applying it correctly. Clearly I wasn’t dedicated enough, because if I were I would have the job. I equated my struggles as an actress with punishment for my behavior. So I was always trying to be a better Scientologist, believing that the technology would provide the assurance for success. The more I worked in the church, the more success I would have in my career. This was the mantra we were taught.

  I heard over and over how the more successful a person was, the more impact he or she could have for the church. I thought I could also make more change happen in the world if I were famous. I pictured myself one day on the cover of Celebrity, Scientology’s answer to People magazine. In this way my two goals of advancing as a Scientologist and as an actress became intertwined.

  My mom’s attitude was that if I wanted to be an actress badly enough, “You’ll make it go right.” That’s a widely used phrase that hints at a major concept running throughout Scientology. Either you are an able being, meaning someone who can overcome any obstacle to achieve a goal, or you are simply an average person who can’t make it happen. I couldn’t be average.

  I didn’t give up—either in the church or as an actress—and finally I was rewarded with something good. John Levey wore the producers down until they agreed to give me a small walk-on part and my first line on none other than Head of the Class!

  It was 1988 when I arrived on the set of my favorite show. It was the first time I’d been on a comedy set. Instantly I knew I was home. The smell of the stage, the heat from the lights, the energy from the audience when they cheered each cast member. And then when an actor got that first laugh—the sound was a drug. I want this. I want to make people feel this.

  I knew I had to make an impression even though I had a pretty nondescript part. I was in a scene where three girls walk by Eric (my future hubby). The first says, “Hi, Eric, three o’clock. Don’t forget,” and walks offstage. The next girl: “Hi, Eric, three-thirty. Don’t forget.” And finally me: “Hi, Eric, three-forty. Don’t forget.”

  How was I going to separate myself from the other girls with that one line?

  I decided to add a dramatic pause and a wink.

  When it was my turn I took a deep breath and went for it. “Hi, Eric. [Pause] Three-forty. [Wink] Don’t forget.”

  “Cut!” the director said. “That’s great. Now can you cut all that other stuff you’re doing and just say your line and walk off like everybody else? Okay, doll?”

  “Doll, that’s cute.” Maybe he wasn’t really seeing the magic before him. I’d do it one more time—after all, he called me “doll.”

  I cut the wink, but I kept the dramatic pause.

  “What did I tell you about all that other shit you’re adding in there? Just say your line and get out.”

  “Okay. Will do.”

  So I cut the wink and the pause, and added only a little look back at the end, like one of those you do to see if a guy is checking you out.

  “Let’s take a camera break here,” he said.

  Cool, I thought. They see the magic before them here. I think they will have a meeting now and discuss how to add me into the show.

  The director called John Levey to the set.

  “Are you deaf or just annoying?” John said to me when he arrived. “They want to recast you, because you’re so annoying. You’re not taking direction. You’ve got to listen. This is not your moment. Steven Spielberg’s not going to see this episode of Head of the Class.”

  He was right. And it wasn’t going any further.

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS THE FALL OF 1988 when I learned about the part of a “sassy girl from Brooklyn with a heart of gold” for a potential new sitcom. Sitting at my desk at Survival Insurance, where unfortunately I was still working, I took down information for my audition from my agent on the phone, writing the description for the character Charlie Briscoe and the name of the show, Living Dolls, on the front of the weekly memo for the Monday-night meeting I always tried to get out of.

  ABC and Columbia Pictures Television wanted a spin-off of Who’s the Boss?, the popular show starring Tony Danza as a retired baseball player turned housekeeper. The way the Living Dolls spin-off was set up was that Charlie is the best friend of Samantha (Alyssa Milano) from her old neighborhood. Charlie runs away from home, naturally, and goes to Samantha’s house, where she is discovered by a modeling agent, played by Michael Learned (the mom from The Waltons), who, wowed by Charlie’s beauty, decides not only to make her a model but also to have her come live with her and a few other models.

  The breakdown for the character of Charlie Briscoe was a teen with a smart mouth, a sense of humor, a New York accent, and a heart of gold. When I heard that, I told my mom, “This part is perfect for me! If I don’t get this part, Mom, I don’t think I’m going to act anymore.”

  “What’s the show about?” she asked.<
br />
  “Models.”

  “Who are you going to play?”

  —

  WHILE I KNEW THAT I was right for the part and I could do the job, I was still nervous. I was really counting on this role and this series to change my life.

  Creator Ross Brown and executive producer Phyllis Glick had me work on a scene a few times. Whatever they saw, they liked it enough for me to get a call back. But right before I left, the casting director gave me a piece of advice for when I returned: “Look like a model.”

  Thanks, genius. Let me do that real quick. Should I also wish for eight more inches of height and higher cheekbones?

  “I can’t be taller and prettier than I am,” I said.

  “Listen, sweetheart, when you come back, wear some makeup.”

  “Good note.”

  I could put on makeup, no problem, but the bigger issue was my nerves. As my time with John Levey showed, I was always great one-on-one or schmoozing a room. However, the minute I was standing in front of all those producers with those sides in my hands, I became a wreck. In a few days I was going to have my network session for Living Dolls. I could already picture all those suits and the shaking script in my hand.

  After pretending to work at Survival, just killing time, I walked into the apartment I shared with my family and found my mom and a group of strangers waiting for me. They were all Scientologists.

  My mother introduced me to Bob, a friend of hers from the church who was a self-proclaimed acting manager. She had approached him about my problem and asked if he could help me prepare for my big audition for ABC. “You need to get comfortable reading in front of a crowd,” he said.

  Bob had me do some exercises straight out of the Scientology course Success Through Communication. It was intended to teach participants how to speak with intention and purpose. I worked from my sides. “Flunk,” he said whenever he couldn’t hear me.

  Next, Bob had me do the sides in different tones along the Tone Scale. That’s a Scientology concept of the “successive emotional tones a person can experience,” with a tone being “the momentary or continuing emotional state of a person.”

  The scale runs from 40.0 at the top, which is known as Serenity of Beingness, through Body Death at 0.0, and all the way down to 40.0, Total Failure. Church policy states that if you are below 2.0 (Antagonism), you are a detriment to yourself and others.

  Scientologists do drills so they can learn to tell where people are on the Tone Scale and can stay clear of people who go below a certain point on the scale.

  Bob felt that actors needed to learn their lines in all tones of the scale so they could find the tone the character was in.

  “Do it in Hostility,” Bob ordered me.

  I tried.

  “I didn’t get that,” he said.

  I tried again.

  “Now do it Numb.”

  “Not enough intention,” was Bob’s response to my effort.

  We went on like this for another two hours.

  —

  AT THE PRODUCERS’ SESSION FOR Living Dolls the next day, I was bolstered by not only the rigorous drills that Bob had put me through but also the support of a whole Scientology community that had come out to encourage me while I did the work. No one could take that away—not even the casting agent, who introduced me to the producers this way: “Okay, the next actress is not a Brooke Shields, but she gets the material. She’s fresh from New York, and very funny.”

  I worked the room the minute I got inside.

  Don’t blow it, Remini.

  And just like in every good made-for-TV movie, I nailed it! My audition was good enough that I convinced the suits I could play a model. If that’s not acting, I don’t know what is. I was so grateful to the Scientology technology that made it happen and the members of my church who rallied around me.

  After five excruciating days, my non-agent Natalie called and as I went to pick up the phone, I was thinking, Please don’t say “It’s not going any further” or “They went another way.” Please change my life, please change my life. I don’t want to have a picnic table as a dining table, I don’t want to scrounge for car payments anymore, please I’ve been good, I’ve been on course, okay I am cheating on my boyfriend but I will give that up tomorrow in session, please give us a better life. Please work, Scientology!…All that in the seconds it took for Natalie to say, “You got your first series.” I was hysterical—screaming, crying, cursing. And further she said, “I am going to need you to come to my office and sign contracts.” Not for the series, but because she had finally decided to officially take me on as a client and be my agent.

  At eighteen years old, I felt this was going to be the ticket out for my entire family. Mom, George, Nicole, Shannon, and I had lived in seven apartments since moving to Los Angeles, and each was just as disgusting as the last. But now I could finally say, “I am an actress, a real one.” I would make my family proud and the church proud.

  I gave notice at Survival Insurance by sending out a company-wide memo announcing: “My fellow co-workers of Survival Insurance, I bid you all adieu, even those who didn’t believe me—I’m off to be a big star. Please feel free to take my clients.”

  A few wrote back via interoffice mail.

  —Break a leg!

  —When do you leave?

  —You owe me money.

  —I thought you were fired a long time ago.

  —I didn’t even know you worked here.

  —Leah, you never had any clients.

  I had a new set of co-workers—my cast mates, and I loved all the girls: Alison Elliott, Vivica Fox (right after the pilot she was replaced with Halle Berry—oh, shit, we were replaceable!), and Deborah Tucker. The producers wanted us to have fun and bond as well as look great, so they treated us to personal training sessions and haircuts at a fancy Beverly Hills salon.

  Getting the star treatment was more glamorous and exciting than anything I could have ever imagined. I also felt strangely comfortable with it. Like, yes, this is where I belong. But my real training for Dolls was on the set of Who’s the Boss?

  Before I was transformed into a fashion model with my own series, I had two weeks on the set of Who’s the Boss? working with seasoned actors like Judith Light and Katherine Helmond. But no one was more influential for me during that crash course in how to be a sitcom star than Tony Danza.

  Tony taught me the importance of turning the page before the next line so you don’t ruin the rhythm of a joke. Because there’s nothing worse than if someone else has a joke, and you’re like, “Hold a second…hold, hold, hold,” while you fumble with the pages.

  And always say hello to your crew. Always know their names. And make eye contact. Tony was big-time all about the crew and any people who became part of the set. He told me that it was important to introduce yourself to the guest cast. Make them feel at home. Don’t ignore people.

  Tony was very warm and efficient. He was strict in the way his set ran, which I learned when I broke one of his cardinal rules: Never keep an audience waiting.

  Throughout a TV show taping before a live audience, actors often have quick changes when you have to change outfits for another scene. Because the dressing rooms aren’t usually located on the stage, there are quick-change rooms backstage, which are basically structures made of felt held together by a clamp with an actor’s name in tape on it. On my first day, as I was walking to the quick-change room for a wardrobe change, Tony stopped me.

  “You can’t be walking,” he said. “There are two hundred and fifty people waiting out there, and once the audience is tired, that’s it. There’s no people laughing at your joke. This isn’t about you. You have to think about the audience. You’ve got to run.”

  After the show, he took me aside.

  “You know why I’m hard on you, right?” he said. “Because you have it and you can
be great. I’ve got to teach you these things now so you don’t get yourself into bad habits.”

  Tony was very loving and giving in a fatherly way. He was the one who taught me right from wrong on a sitcom set—and after my time on Who’s the Boss? I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to talk to my cameraman, be gracious to my guest stars, and run my ass off for my quick changes. I wanted to follow his beautiful example. Why not be nice and courteous?

  Working on a sitcom is the best job you could ever have. It’s very similar to a play, where you rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, and then perform in front of a live audience. From the cameramen to props to wardrobe, everybody’s excited when it’s showtime. You rehearse all week on an empty stage, with no audience, running through the show for the director, then for the writers, then writers and producers, then writers, producers, studio, and the network, just for cameras. But on show night, the audience loads in, the deejay plays the music, the comic starts to warm up the audience—you can hear them laughing (or not) while you are backstage in makeup or your dressing room—your camera guys and girls are dressed up a little more, and there’s just an extra something in the air. The audience is there to see you. YOU. Magic.

  Being on TV also meant I could make more of an impact as a Scientologist. Even though I didn’t get any special pass from my supervisor, who on the news of learning about my new gig asked me what my course schedule was going to be.

  “Well, I can’t be here at all on Friday because I’m filming,” I said.

  “So you’ll have to make up the time on Saturday then,” he said.

  If being a practicing Scientologist was hard before I became a regular on TV, after I started on Living Dolls it was crazy. After a twelve-hour day on set when everyone else was headed home to flop into bed or on their way out to dinner, I had to go to the church to spend two and a half hours on course. Still, there wasn’t any part of me that was unhappy.

  When I got the part, I immediately moved Mom, George, Shannon, and myself into a three-bedroom apartment in Burbank. My mom, like a lot of Scientologists who put most of their resources toward Scientology rather than themselves, was the kind of person to get a secondhand couch or keep a dress forever. Meanwhile, I was working very hard not to be that kind of Scientologist. The conditions we had been living in embarrassed me, just like they had when I was a kid. And just like when I was in Brooklyn, I knew that if I was going to get what I wanted—matching furniture, normal snacks, coffee cups with saucers—I had to make it happen.