Prime premieres ‘The Pasta Queen,’ who happens to be a major Scientology donor

Prime’s new cooking series, The Pasta Queen, is getting raves from outfits like Deadline and Collider, who are citing the show’s lush visuals and gorgeous landscapes as star chef Nadia Caterina Munno scours her native Italy for ingredients to cook back at home.

Which, it turns out, happens to be Clearwater, Florida, the stronghold of a particular controversial totalitarian organization that comes up rather often here at the Underground Bunker.

But just because Munno lives in a lavish mansion in Clearwater, and has turned what started out as a TikTok experiment during the pandemic into social media fame and now a Prime series, just because she lives in that beleaguered town, that doesn’t mean she’s a Scientologist, does it?

Whoo boy.

We want to thank the reader who brought The Pasta Queen to our attention. We had no familiarity with Munno or her rising success, and we didn’t know that her Prime series had premiered just a little over a week ago. But her name had appeared here at the Underground Bunker before.

Munno is married to businessman Brook Zimmatore, and under that name Nadia and her husband have appeared in Scientology publications as longtime members, at least since 2003.

But much more telling than that, we here at the Bunker reported in March 2022 that Scientology, in its Impact magazine, recognized Brook and Nadia Zimmatore for achieving the status of “Platinum Meritorious” donors to the International Association of Scientologists, the church’s membership organization and a slush fund for church leader David Miscavige to use on his building projects, endless litigation, and retaliation programs.

“Platinum Meritorious” means that Brook and Nadia have given Scientology at least $2.5 million in donations just to the IAS, not to mention the millions more they will have paid for courses and auditing over the last 20 years, and to Miscavige’s other donor initiatives.

Only a small percentage of Scientologists, even lifetime members and hardcore employees, ever achieve the status of Platinum Meritorious.

In other words, Nadia Caterina Munno is as hardcore a Scientologist as they come, and she and her husband have contributed millions of dollars to David Miscavige’s vendettas as he rips apart families, forces women to have abortions, and tries to destroy former members like Leah Remini utterly.

But hey, now you can watch Nadia travel to Italy in search of fresh ingredients for a yummy gnocchi.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

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