Scientology didn’t want you to know that Elisabeth Moss attended the LRH Birthday
Mike Rinder tells us he was surprised to see in our story yesterday that we had blown up photos Scientology posted in a press release and found that John Travolta and Elisabeth Moss were front and center at the March 16 L. Ron Hubbard Birthday Event in Clearwater, Florida.
Mike pointed out that at Scientology’s main website a different image appears, and in place of Travolta and Moss were another important Scientology duo, major donors Alan and Sheila Atkinson-Baker.
Were the wealthy Atkinson-Bakers, who own a major court reporting service, merely filling those seats until the photo could be taken and then were moved out for Travolta and Moss, or was this a Photoshop job?
We don’t know. But we do know that Travolta and Moss can clearly be seen in the photos at the press release, and while we’ve seen Travolta attend this event numerous times, this is the first time we’ve ever seen Elisabeth Moss at any major Scientology event.
We asked Geoff Levin, a musician who was formerly a fixture at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre, for his thoughts about Moss showing up to the event.
“I’ve known Elisabeth since she was a toddler. I performed many times with her mom Linda, and I brought Linda into my recording studio. Elisabeth and I ran into each other often and talked many times at Celebrity Centre,” he said. “Of course she is still a dedicated Scientologist. And my gut feeling is Celebrity Centre International made it their highest priority to get Elisabeth to the Birthday Event. I feel Miscavige is not happy with the poor showing CC Int is making regarding bringing new celebs in like they used to. So it was of paramount importance that they get one their few big celebs at the event.
“Also, after the bad press from her father Ron Moss’s death, she needed to show more solidarity. Her showing up was a big perk for the whales who were there.”
Rinder, meanwhile, tells us that Moss’s presence suggests to him that she is being subjected to a major conditioning exercise.
“I think she is probably the target of a very intense campaign to ‘get her on board’ — like the one that was conducted by Marty Rathbun to get Tom Cruise ‘active’ under the direction of Miscavige. She is the only ‘new’ big name celebrity Scientology has. But she has not been ‘disseminating’ and I would bet that insisting she attend this event to ‘see how we are expanding and how great things are going’ is part of this effort to get her ‘on board.’ Also very likely she is being audited/sec checked by someone in RTC, closely supervised by Miscavige as the ‘executive C/S’ (a very bad thing according to Hubbard). Travolta is probably part of it — helping her as an ‘old hand.’ He doesn’t have anyone else these days. Kelly, Kirstie, and Lisa Marie are all gone.”
(Rinder’s reference to Cruise was in regards to the actor drifting away from Scientology while he was with Nicole Kidman in the years 1992-2000. Then, after the couple split, Cruise was subjected to an intense campaign by Marty Rathbun, under Miscavige’s direction, to get him back in the fold and re-dedicated to the cause. By 2003, Cruise was so gung-ho he appeared at the grand opening of the new Applied Scholastics headquarters in Missouri, and then in 2004 he went to his one and only Ideal Org grand opening in Madrid in September, and in October received his big medal from David Miscavige recognizing his new involvement.)
For years, we’ve seen interesting media takes on Moss, who stars in a successful show that criticizes a totalitarian, dystopian future (The Handmaid’s Tale), while she grew up in and is a prominent member of an actual totalitarian ‘religious’ organization with designs to subject the entire planet to the ideas of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard.
And while various commenters have wrestled with that cognitive dissonance, we’ve seen others surmising (or hoping) that although Moss had grown up in Scientology, perhaps she was only tangentially related to it or not hardcore about Hubbard and his precepts.
But here she is, front row and center at a 3.5-hour ceremony lavishing praise on Hubbard and featuring the boasts of its current leader, Miscavige, presenting the “expansion” of new “Ideal Orgs” which he opened recently in Austin, Mexico City and Chicago.
Moss has a new spy series coming soon to the FX Network, “The Veil.” When she does press for it, we hope an enterprising reporter will ask her about attending the birthday party of L. Ron Hubbard with John Travolta.
Did she get to meet David Miscavige? And what does she think about Leah Remini’s lawsuit against Scientology which claims that Scientology viciously harasses former members, or the lawsuits by Danny Masterson’s victims and Valeska Paris and the Baxters that allege human trafficking, sexual abuse of employees, and coddling of sexual predators?
They’re all fair game questions now.
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What a bad look for Scientology. They have two photos of the birthday game event. That really shows the extent they go to obfuscate. This is not new. I hope people are paying attention.
It would also be good if someone asked her if she was personally asked to be an arbitrator for Valerie Haney's arbitration and did she personally, and of her own free will, turn it down.