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As filming went on, we held further auditions: we cast an actor to play Tom Cruise, then took a small band of young players through a Scientology boot camp, with Rathbun as drill sergeant, before ambitiously recreating the scenes of abuse that Rathbun and others have said took place behind closed doors in the upper echelons of Scientology. (The church denies abuse took place and refutes most of the other negative characterisations of the ex-members.)
The Scientologists’ strikeback started about two months into filming. I had begun worrying that the church might have given up counter-investigating. I’ve never been so relieved to have an unidentified pair of people show up and start filming me in a random creepy way from across the road. After studying the subject for years, watching countless YouTube videos of Scientology handlers filming critics and journalists, it felt amazing to be on the receiving end myself: I felt like I’d been blooded.
A torrent of letters from Scientology lawyers also began pouring in.
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Without access, though, it’s trickier. I tended only to meet the Scientologists in charged settings – when they were filming me, or ambushing one of my contributors, or accusing me of trespassing. It’s surprisingly hard to be nice to someone when you feel they aren’t being nice to you. But we strove to be fair to Scientology. I tried to see the world from their side. And there is much to admire in Scientology: the dedication of its devotees and the world-changing character of its vision. We also questioned the motivations and credibility of our ex-Scientologists, who, it is always worth remembering, were signed up to the Scientology programme for years, and sometimes decades, before deciding to leave.
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But I also see Scientology as not so different from other religions: a set of beliefs and practices that, at their very heart, are mysterious and have to be taken on faith – and which, for that reason, can be life-giving and offer people hope in ways that reasoning and logic cannot.
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