RealTime

Julianne Witnessed Leah Remini’s “Dark Side”

A former friend recalls how Leah Remini had a “dark side that would sometimes pop up” that hurt her relationships.

TRANSCRIPT:

What Leah’s doing right now isn’t so shocking to me. I actually started seeing some behaviors that I really kind of was like, “Whoa, this is not a nice person.” And that hit me in 2008.

We ended up becoming pretty close friends in the early 2000s. We, you know, she was at my baby shower in 2007, I was at her baby shower, birthdays, hanging out at her house, karaoke parties. So we got to be pretty close in, I think, 2000 to about 2007. Once she had her kid she definitely went into the “I’m a new mom” mode and didn’t see her as much.

But it definitely hit me in 2008 at her sister’s wedding. I was eight months pregnant and I was waddling in to go pee, as very pregnant people do. And I opened the door to the lobby, which is where we had entered, and she looked right at me and said to somebody to her side, she goes, “I thought we closed this—” no, she said, “I thought we closed this door to the public.” And I was like, “Oh! Oh, your friend, the eight-month pregnant person has to go pee and that’s—that’s where you’re at.” And I definitely—that was it for me. I was like, “Got it. I see where she’s at now.”

You could always tell that there was a dark side that would sometimes pop up. She was constantly digging for salaciousness or gossipy stuff and it—when you’re joking around and it’s lighthearted that’s fine but that’s kind of like a little indicator that, you know, that’s where she lives. That’s her little wheelhouse of what she likes to talk about. You know, looking for dirt and always having the trash magazines around and, you know, looking for stuff on other people or herself.

She’s always been trying to control her inner beast. And she knows she can get nasty and mean and Scientology was continually helping her to, you know, be a kinder, nicer person, being happier with herself.

She was constantly just, like, an antagonistic person. You know, she called her daughter a c—t, all the time. Like, I think at that time, her two, three, four-year-old, a “little bitch.”

You know, the beast was too much for her and, you know, with her career, maybe not being on a hit show. I don’t know. She got fired from The Talk, paychecks being of an issue. And her mom who’s—that’s another subject—in her ear. And it’s like, “Hey, what better way than to make some money is to just try to attack Scientology.”