Leah Remini celebrated completing her second year at New York University despite being raised with no formal education in the Church of Scientology.
“Two years ago, I had an 8th-grade education thanks to spending 35 years in a cult,” the “King of Queens” alum wrote on Instagram Friday.
“And now, at age 52, I’ve successfully finished my second year at NYU,” she continued. “Undertaking this educational journey has been one of the most difficult experiences of my life.”
Despite contemplating “giving up” at times, Remini is “so glad” that she “decided to dive in.”
“If you have the desire and capacity, please remember that it’s never too late to start again,” she concluded.
Remini announced in May 2021 that she had been accepted into NYU — eight years after she left Scientology.
“This didn’t come easy. This is one of the last chunks of my life that I am taking back for myself from Scientology,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “It took a lot for me to take this step, for fear that I was not smart enough, not worthy enough, not able to do the work that will be required, my age.”
Yet while starting this new chapter of her life, Remini couldn’t help but look back at what got her there.
“Scientologists are taught that kids are no different from adults. So from a very young age I was held accountable like an adult and regularly told that anything bad that happened in my life, even things that I wasn’t responsible for, was my fault,” she shared in a lengthy Twitter thread in January 2022.
Remini said by the age of 16, she hadn’t “received any sort of formal education for years” because she was forced to work instead.
She also explained that L. Ron Hubbard, the controversial religion’s founder, had a “deep disdain for conventional education,” leading her to pursue a career in acting.
However, reps for the Church of Scientology blasted Remini’s tweets, telling her to “get a life.”
“Leah Remini’s lack of education is of her own doing and it is shameful to publish
such bigotry,” International Spokesperson Karin Pouw said in a statement to Pvnew at the time.
“Remini’s livelihood derives from promoting hate and lies like these toward her former religion. As Remini told journalist Meredith Vieira in 2004, she talked her mother into letting her drop out of school so she could become a ‘star.’ Remini needs to get a life.”
Since leaving the religion, Remini has devoted her life to exposing the secretive society. She even released a memoir, “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology,” and a docuseries, “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” dedicated to taking down the religious group.
