Shelley Duvall’s fears about Scientology, and why she called us about it
We were saddened to hear yesterday about the death of Shelley Duvall, the actress who left such a lasting impression with her performances in films like Nashville (1975), The Shining (1980), and Popeye (1980). There was an immediate outpouring of touching tributes to her online, and some of them mentioned that in later life, Duvall had struggled with mental health problems and had bravely talked about it publicly.
One of the best overviews of her career and later struggles was written by Seth Abramovitch for The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. It’s an excellent profile that reviews the unlikely way that Duvall got into making films, and then found herself working with some of the most important directors in Hollywood, including Stanley Kubrick, who put her through such a grueling and abusive experience making The Shining.
Despite Duvall’s success, Abramovitch says that after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, she left Los Angeles and returned to Texas, where she was from.
“For the next two decades, she fell completely off the map,” Abramovitch writes.
It was in that period, when Duvall had essentially disappeared, that she called me.
It was in 2011, when I was editor-in-chief at the Village Voice, and I’d been writing about Scientology for the Voice’s website, a subject I first started covering in 1995 at the Phoenix New Times.
And over the past 29 years, I’ve pretty regularly received messages from people who say they are being targeted by Scientology, that their phones have been tapped, their movements watched… and all for no particular reason.
It’s a familiar experience, and one that all reporters go through.
But this was something else again. It’s not every day that you get that kind of call from someone like Shelley Duvall.
She said she had been reading my stories and she wanted me to know that her house was under constant attack by Scientologists. They were trying to murder her, she said, and she needed help.
For about a minute, I admit I was tempted to write a story about it. The National Enquirer had already said that Duvall was living in squalor in Texas and had lost her mind. But I decided against it. I hoped she got some help, and I didn’t do anything with the information.
Years later, I changed my mind about that after Duvall, in 2016, made a bizarre appearance on Dr. Phil McGraw’s television show, and her obvious mental issues became a national conversation. Says Abramovitch…
Phil McGraw and his Dr. Phil crew descended on the town to shoot a disturbing interview with Duvall, during which she babbled free-associative nonsense and disclosed paranoid fantasies. (Among them, she insisted her Popeye co-star Robin Williams, who died by suicide in 2014 after suffering from delusions, was still alive and “a shapeshifter.”) The episode was met with near-universal condemnation of Dr. Phil.
And then, something even stranger happened. One of the people getting attention for attacking Dr. Phil and trying to help Duvall was Vivian Kubrick, who briefly set up a GoFundMe to raise money so Duvall could get proper care.
Why Vivian Kubrick? For the connection to her father, director Stanley Kubrick, and The Shining, apparently.
But the odd thing about it was that Vivian herself was an ardent Scientologist, and someone we had been keeping an eye on for a few years, ever since she showed up in a video of a 2014 Alex Jones rally in Dallas, where she was living at the time.
We wrote at length about Vivian’s journey in Scientology, reporting that her family was shocked when we spotted her in the Alex Jones video — it had been more than a decade since they had heard anything about her. Vivian had joined Scientology around the year 1995, and she began to pull away from her father and the rest of the family as he was making his final film, Eyes Wide Shut. He died in 1999 a few months before the movie opened in theaters, and at his funeral Vivian showed up with a Scientology handler. She disconnected permanently from the family after that, not even showing up in 2009 at the funeral of her sister Anya, whom she had been very close to growing up.
In 2016, Vivian made a stir by creating the GoFundMe for Duvall, and we wrote that it was hard to believe that a Scientologist would be committed to finding Duvall proper care when Scientology itself considers psychiatry to be the most evil force in the universe.
After raising more than $23,000 in just four days, Vivian announced that she had to shut down the fund entirely once she actually talked with Shelley Duvall’s mother. (Vivian blamed an issue with donations causing problems with Shelley’s SAG-AFTRA health insurance.)
After the debacle with Dr. Phil, Duvall began to hear from people who had real concern for her well being. When Abramovitch found her in Texas in 2021 to interview her, he found that she still had fascinating memories about her Hollywood years. “Her mood ebbed and flowed throughout the day, but…I found her memory to be sharp and her stories engrossing.”
And Vivian Kubrick? She had been an obsessive Tweeter for years, about all sorts of conspiracies, but then in 2021, she suddenly stopped, saying she was going to take a break from social media. She later picked up at Gab, the conservative Twitter alternative, but again this past February announced that she was taking another break.
We’re not sure where Vivian’s journey will take her. But we are glad to see that Shelley Duvall is being remembered as a truly gifted actress who made such an impression during one of Hollywood’s most experimental and meaningful eras.
And we’re still glad she gave us a call in 2011.
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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
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At the end of her life, Shelley lived in a community that took care of her and didn’t exploit her. When reading THR yesterday, this part brought tears to my eyes.
“Kristina Keller, a 50-something with a Texas twang, pulls me aside. “I’m not sure who you are,” she says. “But out here amongst these rural Hill Country communities, we look out for each other and we take care of each other. Does that make sense?”
Shelley was taken care of out of the limelight by people who genuinely cared for her wellbeing. They loved her for who she was. People like Dr. Phill deserve a special seat in hell.
Scientology could take lessons on how people should be treated from this example. You don’t discard, you treasure.
Ah Tony, of *course* you’ve got a Shelly Duvall story, bless her soul and may she rest in peace. Such a good tale!! Thank you!