Leah Remini describes her lack of education as a result of Scientology

Leah Remini proudly continues her education after leaving the Church of Scientology in 2013.

“Two years ago I got an eighth grade education thanks to being in a cult for 35 years,” says the King of queens alum wrote via Instagram on Friday, June 2. “And now, at age 52, I have successfully completed my sophomore year at NYU.”

Remini, who has long spoken out against the church and its controversial teachings, added: “Undertaking this educational journey has been one of the most difficult experiences of my life. There have been days when I thought about giving up. While I’m still not done, I’m so glad I decided to dive in.”

She concluded the post with a message of hope to her 3.6 million followers: “If you have the desire and the capacity, remember it’s never too late to start over.”

The two-time Emmy winner’s celeb friends were quick to congratulate her in the comments.

“I love you baby cakes,” Chelsea Handlers wrote. “Proud of you always,” shared Rosie O’Donnell.

The former Scientology and the aftermath host previously claimed that the church choked her education after eighth grade.

“Scientologists are taught that children are no different from adults. So from a very young age I was held accountable as an adult and regularly told that everything bad that happened in my life, even things I wasn’t responsible for, was my fault,” Remini wrote in a long post. Twitter thread she shared in January 2022. “Even though I was only 16 at the time, I hadn’t had any form of formal education in years. Instead, I had been working for years so that I could support myself and my family. For the last 38 years of my life I have lived and worked with an 8th grade education.”

The Exes alum continued: “L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had a profound contempt for conventional education, and since everything in Scientology is directly guided by his policies, with no room for interpretation, my education was interrupted.”

Although Remini was a teenager at the time, she broke into acting to help save her family from financial ruin – and to be viewed favorably in the Scientology community.

“I saw a successful acting career as a salvation. It would help lift my family out of poverty and give me a higher position in Scientology that I truly believed helped save humanity,” she tweeted. “At that time we lived in misery without furniture. Every spare penny we had went to Scientology for required courses, sessions and treatments. I was determined to put my family in better conditions.”

Reflecting on her decision to enroll at New York University in her 50s, Remini wrote, “If you had told me then that I would be a student at NYU at 51, I wouldn’t have believed it.” . I had big dreams then, but looking back on them, they were rooted in my desire to survive… I couldn’t have imagined a world where I would be a college student at my age.

While the New York-born woman is pursuing her own education, her 18-year-old daughter Sofia is also studying.

“Long story… but one of the things I have learned in life is that there is always time to correct course. There’s no point in holding on to something that doesn’t work for you. In every situation. At any time in your life’, Remini, who shares Sofia with her husband Angelo Bagan, wrote via Instagram in February about their daughter’s educational journey. “In August, our daughter Sofia enrolled in a university she thought was meant for her. I moved her into a dorm room and came home heartbroken to a quiet house.

When Sofia’s first-choice university “didn’t make sense to her,” the teen left and moved back home with her parents before starting school. Although Remini had already taken her only child out of the house – and was proud of her for continuing her educational pursuits – she didn’t expect the second attempt to hit her so hard.

“Crying, not knowing what to do with ourselves right now except look at pictures and videos and cry some more,” says the Kevin can wait alum shared in her Instagram post.