Jada Pinkett Smith settled her feud with Leah Remini on Monday's episode of her Facebook Watch show Red Table Talk, explaining that she and her husband, Will Smith, are not Scientologists.
It all started when Remini wrote in her 2015 Scientology-exposing memoir Troublemaker that she would see Pinkett Smith at Scientology gatherings. Remini detailed one particular instance where she refused to participate in a game of hide-and-seek in mutual friend Tom Cruise's backyard, but that the Smiths did.
When asked on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live for her side of that story, Pinkett Smith said she remembered the story differently and that the game was more like adults innocently playing hide-and-seek with their children.
Remini says she took this as "textbook" fair gaming, a strategy with Scientologists where they mock and then unrelentingly discredit critics of the religion. This prompted Remini to claim that Pinkett Smith was a Scientologist in an interview with the Daily Beast.
Pinkett Smith responded to that interview with a series of tweets explaining her relationship to Scientology, stating, "I am not a Scientologist."
I practice human kindness, and I believe that we each have the right to determine what we are and what we are not.
On Red Table Talk, Pinkett Smith elaborated on those tweets.
"I love religion because I grew up in the ethical society, so my grandmother was like, 'You're going to learn all the religions and then you've got to decide which one you want to practice,'" she said. It's why Pinkett Smith felt that she could walk into the church's Celebrity Centre and still say, "I'm not a Scientologist. I want to just be here and see what you have to offer."
However, Remini did check her on that, reminding Pinkett Smith that she was likely not punished for asking questions given her and her husband's celebrity status. Meanwhile, Remini, who was a longtime member of the church, says she was interrogated in Florida for three months when she asked where the wife of the head of Scientology, David Miscavige, was. Shelly Miscavige has not appeared publicly in more than a decade.
Things ended civilly between Pinkett Smith and Remini, with the women agreeing that despite their misunderstanding and snowballing feud, "it is never too late to heal."