Editor who worked on 'Aftermath' loses home, incensed to see Scientology VMs
Friday, they were featured in a Fortune magazine story. Yesterday morning, they were interviewed live on Good Morning America.
Robyn and Ivan Migel have been generous with reporters, telling them about their harrowing adventure when, early last Wednesday, the Eaton fire suddenly threatened their Altadena home.
They have described how they had only minutes to decide what to take with them as embers were raining down on the house and an oak tree came apart and nearly fell on Ivan.
After they fled, fire engulfed their home and reduced it to a chimney and not much else, as you can see in the photo of Robyn and her daughter above.
Like so many other people in Southern California, they are now trying to figure out how to move on after losing so many of their possessions. They’ve started a GoFundMe which is doing well thanks to the generosity of their many friends and current and former co-workers.
Their story reflects the situation of so many people during these apocalyptic days in Los Angeles. But we were especially grateful and surprised when Robyn dropped us a line after seeing our story about Scientology’s “Volunteer Ministers,” who were accused of hogging relief supplies and mugging for photo opportunities, as they are so often accused of doing at disaster sites.
Robyn wanted us to know how much this incensed her. Because, she explained, she had worked as an editor on the second season of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, and knew all about the VMs and their attempts to turn disasters into PR for Scientology.
In fact, one of the episodes Robyn worked on in the 2017 season was one we had appeared in that was about Scientology’s sneaky front groups — including, ironically enough, Scientology’s disaster-porn purveyors, the Volunteer Ministers.
We asked Robyn how she’s getting along after her life has been so upended.
“It's a lot. Like we’re going up and down on a rollercoaster,” she told us in a phone conversation yesterday. She says she’s trying not to beat herself up about the things she left behind when she had only minutes to decide what to carry with them when they evacuated. “But then I think about my Christmas ornaments from my childhood. I know it’s just stuff, but it’s a lot,” she says. She was the family historian, for example, and had a huge collection of photos that are now all gone.
Robyn is a freelance TV editor with two Emmy nominations under her belt, and she considers the season she worked on Aftermath as a career highlight.
“I watched the first season, before I worked on it. I was a huge fan,” she says.
“When I was a teenager, Scientology tried to get me in. I filled out the form. I was having a hard time at home. I thought it was a quick fix. They convinced me it would be,” she remembers. But her mother, who was studying for a psychology degree, checked it out. “She went in there and came out with a big smirk on her face, saying ‘Yeah, we won't be doing this.’”
Later, Robyn was briefly interested in the contents of Dianetics, she admits. “But then I saw Going Clear, and that’s what really opened my eyes.”
She was excited to work on Leah’s show, and she says she was brought in to work specifically on the “special episodes” of the second season. In one of these, “The Business of Religion,” Leah and Mike Rinder conducted round-table discussions with guests, but she says that they were unhappy with a rough cut.
“Leah was upset. They said, ‘You’re our talk-show editor, see what you can do.’ So I took a pass at it, and when Mike saw it, he came over and hugged me. That was one of the most special moments of my life,” Robyn says.
Later in the season, she edited the special episode titled “Propaganda Arms” that featured Quailynn McDaniel, who talked about flying a plane to disaster sites for the Volunteer Ministers, where the real goal was to get footage of yellow-jacketed Scientologists giving “assists” and appearing to help first responders.
We were sitting there at the table with her at the taping, and we remember Quailynn talking about how they had showed up at a flood and were handing out copies of an L. Ron Hubbard pamphlet about how to save a marriage. It was ludicrous, and not lost on Robyn.
For now, she says they’re staying with a friend in Silver Lake as they try to regroup. We asked her if she lost editing equipment in the fire.
“This is the first time since 1993 that I haven't had access to my own Avid setup. That’s one of the things that makes me feel helpless,” she says.
The four of them — Robyn, Ivan, their son (25) and daughter (22) — had only minutes to get out of the house after the Santa Anas had been blowing at near hurricane speeds.
“I've lived in LA County my whole life. I’ve never experienced winds like that and for that many hours,” she says.
“When we first started to evacuate, I thought, this is dumb, we'll be back in a few hours. Then I went outside and thought, Oh my god. We have to run! Big chunks of burning stuff was falling on the roof. We have a lot of old growth oaks, and one of them came apart and almost fell on Ivan. It was like a Spielberg movie, it was crazy.”
In order to get away, they had to drive over their back fence, which had fallen down.
“I had the cats in my car, and my daughter had the dogs in her car. There was no power and it was totally dark. We almost got into an accident pulling into the street.”
Later, they went back to see the damage, and how almost nothing of their house is left. Robyn says she’s been very unhappy to see the yellow-clad Volunteer Ministers in the area, and the reports of them filming themselves loading and unloading supplies.
“I know what they really do, I know they don't really help,” she says. “There are so many opportunities for people to volunteer. But these able-bodied Scientologists aren’t doing anything to help. I don’t know how you make sense of that, when you see people suffering and you don’t help.”
In contrast, she says her husband Ivan was invited by the grip union he belongs to, IATSE Local 80, to a distribution site for supplies and assistance.
“I was so impressed by all the volunteers. Trans, gay, all colors — and all these people coming together to sort these goods, And I got hugged by so many people,” she says. “And then I see these Scientologists come in and get their photo opportunity and then blow. It’s hard to understand.”
The generosity of strangers and friends has been uplifting, especially when the danger has still not passed, she says. “A lot of my friends who were sharing my GoFundMe are now evacuating themselves.”
Having worked on Leah’s show, she knows that the Scientologists are only pretending to help. “There’s no moral compass there. What do they think helping really is? And you can tell they’re looking down on us,” she says.
“I have friends who are Satanists, and they're giving to my GoFundMe. Satanists!”
Chris Shelton is going Straight Up and Vertical
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Forget getting her more clothes or towelsor whatever, someone get Robyn an AVID setup! It probably feels to her like she's lost a limb. Thank you, Robyn, for taking the time to reach out to the Bunker.
More like Volunteer Vultures. I hope more media outs the Vms and their useless, and even counter productive conduct.