Shannon Burwell
on Leah Remini

I was acting in an episode of King of Queens. I was cast in it. I didn't know Leah or anybody in her family beforehand. I just was cast and when I arrived on the set for rehearsal that week, immediately she'd had a huge blow up with the director, and she was acting very mean and pretty awful. And they actually had to shut the set down for at least an hour while she, you know, whatever, cooled off, came back. And then, and she was pretty mean the whole week. And because I knew she was a Scientologist I actually was embarrassed that she was acting that way.

So, it was the day of the show. We were both—we were the only two people in the makeup room at the time other than the makeup people working on each of us. And she was trying to create some energy in the room and she turned to her makeup girl and she said, “What do I have to do? Do I have to stick my hand up your bleep to get a rise out of you?” And I was stunned. And the other—and you could tell that it actually kind of deflated the energy in the room. But because she was the star of the show everyone had to kind of pretend that they thought it was funny.