Penny Atwell-Jones, mother of three and grandmother of six, was a personal friend of Leah Remini’s and got to see her rudeness and narcissism up close.
I never saw that Leah actually had any respect for anybody. I guess that’s a key thing. She didn’t respect anyone, because it was just all about her—I mean not about anybody else. Just all about Leah.
Penny also explained Leah’s obsession with having things a certain way. She discussed how Leah insisted on having an entire penthouse hotel suite redone so the furniture and carpet would be white and had every cabinet shelf labeled to list out the items inside from champagne glasses to white coffee cups. Penny said Leah was embarrassing to her in the way she treated the staff in demanding such service. “It was really embarrassing and I would say, ‘Leah, they’re not your servants.’”
Penny, a Scientologist for 48 years, also took up Leah’s lying on her show, saying things Penny knows to be untrue.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
So I think it was around five years ago Leah was here at the Church and staying at one of the buildings in a penthouse. And she called me to come over, she didn’t like the furniture because it was dark wood and Leah likes everything white, which is fine. I have white furniture too. But Leah wanted everything removed, including the carpeting, and white furniture brought in. And I said, “Leah, this isn’t your house you know. It’s not the way I decorate either, but it’s beautiful and it’s nice and it’s spotlessly clean.” “No, can’t live with this,” so she had people go out and get her the furniture, in fact I went and got some for her; found her white furniture. And I found it a bit obsessive. I found it rude to the staff to make them do a job that they didn’t really need to do.
Leah has never been an A-list celebrity, but she thinks she is. They don’t demand all this extra attention. They’re here like every one of the rest of us are here. But not Leah—she wants to be followed around and just given all this attention. I can remember saying to her at times, “Wow! How much attention do you really need?”
So she has everything redone. She has P-touches on all the drawers, the kitchen cabinets— champagne glasses, drinking glasses, white coffee cups. I remember saying, “Can’t you just open the cabinet and see what there is there?” I mean, she had to have it, you know, or open a drawer—white socks, black socks. On her desk, P-touched these plexiglass containers keys, pens. I just found it—like I say, I’m very organized, but I found that just a bit obsessive, okay? Like, “do you have nothing else to do with your time except P-touch? You can’t see what’s there?” I’m not being critical about it, I just found it a bit… I’m a designer myself and I design homes, but I’ve never gone to the extent of P-touching everything in somebody’s house.
So she’s staying in the penthouse and she doesn’t like the food. She didn’t like the dining room food and didn’t want to go to the dining room. So she had a chef. And that doesn't come with the penthouse, you know what I mean? As far as I know, there’s not a private chef that comes there and cooks for you. I guess you could request it, I don’t know, I haven’t stayed in the penthouse. But she has a private chef—she doesn’t like the chef’s cooking, so she orders a different chef to come and cook. I mean it was just—she was so demanding, that’s the word, she was so—I’ve never met anybody as demanding as Leah was when she was here, to the point that it was embarrassing to me. It was really embarrassing and I would say, “Leah they’re not your servants.”
You know it doesn’t matter in Scientology whether you make $10,000 a year, $100,000 a year or a million dollars a year, we’re all on the same level. Nobody is treated according to how much money they make, where they come from and what they do. We all get treated the same. That’s one of the beautiful things about the Church. But Leah doesn’t kind of get it. Leah thinks that she needs to be treated like a total princess.
I never saw that Leah actually had any respect for anybody.
I guess that’s a key thing. She didn’t respect anyone, because it was just all about her. I mean not about anybody else, just all about Leah and nobody else.
And all I could think of, watching this, I kind of had to chuckle, is she’s being an actress. And I sit there watching her interviewing these other people. And how Leah, with a tissue, and she’s not really even crying. I mean, she’s acting that she’s crying or that she’s so upset by what these people are saying.
On the show she says you have to do Scientology 365 days out of the year, minimum 2-1/2 hours a day. I never put in 2-1/2 hours a day. I never do Scientology 365 days a year. So she’s lying on the show, she’s having others lie on the show saying in order to do Scientology you have to do it 365 days a year. That’s totally a lie. When I go and take a class, yeah it will be for a certain amount of time, a week, two weeks, maybe three weeks. But that certainly is not 365 days out of the year. Oh my god, how did I have three children? And how did I have three children, raised three children and have a life? She says you don’t get to take vacations and you can’t go anywhere, you can’t do anything. That is an out-and-out lie. I take vacations, my friends take vacations, my daughter’s off in Aspen right now skiing.
Leah, you talk about how we have to be here on course every day minimum 2-1/2 hours a day. When have you ever done that 365 days a year? When have you ever done that yourself, Leah?
So you’ve been lying the whole time, just like you’re lying about a lot of things you’re saying in your show. And what I want to know, that I want aired, is how much money are you making? I want to know how much money are you making to do this show and how much is Rinder and these other people that you have on the show? I’m sure they’re all getting paid. I bet my bottom dollar they’re all getting paid.
