Charles Sykes/BravoLeah Remini is opening up about her decision to leave the Church of Scientology.
The 45-year-old actress famously left the controversial religion back in 2013. Now, in her new TLC reality show Leah Remini: It's All Relative, the former King of Queens star says she cut ties with Scientology to save her family.
"I decided I didn't want to raise my daughter [Sofia] in the church because from what I experience and what I saw, the church becomes your everything. It becomes your mother, your father, your everything. You are dependent on the church," Remini, who was raised in the religion, says in a People clip.
"If you're raised in it as a child, you really don't have loyalty to your family," she continued. "The church does come first to you and that is what we would be teaching Sofia. And I just didn't want her to be raised that way because let's say in 10 years if I don't want to be connected to the church anymore, my own daughter would be taught to disconnect from me. And so I didn't want to create that. I didn't think it would be healthy for her."
On the show, Remini meets with other women who also decided to leave Scientology and she talks about the "pretty hard repercussions" she experienced.
"If you make a stink in the public world, they call you a suppressive person, which means the church has put a stamp on you that says you are bad," she says. "They then go to all your family and friends and say you have to disconnect from this suppressive person."