1. Leah Remini starred as Carrie Heffernan on the CBS sitcom The King of Queens and as Vanessa Celluci in the CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait, both alongside Kevin James.
46 Facts About Leah Remini
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Two years later, Leah Remini released her book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology; the memoir became number one on the New York Times Best Seller list.
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Since July 2020, Leah Remini has been the cohost of the podcast Scientology: Fair Game, alongside Mike Rinder.
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Leah Remini cohosted the daytime talk show The Talk.
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Leah Remini's films include the comedy Old School, the mystery comedy Handsome, and the romantic comedy Second Act.
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Leah Remini was born on June 15,1970, in Brooklyn, New York City, to Vicki Marshall and George Leah Remini, who owned an asbestos removal company.
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Leah Remini's mother is of Austrian Jewish descent, while her father has Italian ancestry, rooted in Sicily.
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Leah Remini was baptized into the Catholic Church as an infant and raised in the faith during her early childhood.
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When she was 8, her mother joined the Church of Scientology, and Leah Remini was thereafter raised as a Scientologist.
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Leah Remini's mother decided to take her children out of the Sea Org and return to civilian Scientology life within the same year.
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Leah Remini moved to Los Angeles, with her mother and sisters, where she spent the remainder of her teenage years working to pay off their debt to Scientology for all of their auditing received.
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In 1991, Leah Remini had a supporting role as Tina Bovasso on ABC's sitcom The Man in the Family.
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Leah Remini then had recurring roles on Saved by the Bell playing Stacey Carosi, and on Evening Shade as Taylor Newton's girlfriend, Daisy.
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Leah Remini then appeared in two more short-lived series, First Time Out and Fired Up.
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In 1994, Leah Remini auditioned for the role of Monica Geller on Friends, but the role went to Courteney Cox.
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Leah Remini later appeared in the 1995 Friends episode "The One with the Birth" in which she played a pregnant woman, Lydia, whose delivery is aided by Joey Tribbiani.
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In 1998, Leah Remini landed the role of Carrie Heffernan on the CBS sitcom The King of Queens.
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Leah Remini had a supporting role in the comedy film Old School.
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Leah Remini starred in her own reality show, Inside Out: Leah Remini, which was a documentary that aired on VH1 about Remini's wedding.
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Leah Remini has starred in nine-episode webisodes of In the Motherhood, along with Chelsea Handler and Jenny McCarthy, and made two guest appearances on Handler's talk show Chelsea Lately.
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On December 15,2009, Leah Remini appeared as Heffernan on Lopez Tonight with George Lopez in an episode reuniting the cast of the George Lopez sitcom.
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In October 2011, Leah Remini signed a talent development deal at ABC and ABC Studios that required the network and the studio to develop a comedy project for Leah Remini to star in and produce.
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Leah Remini competed on season 17 of Dancing with the Stars, in which she was partnered with professional dancer Tony Dovolani.
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Leah Remini later returned in season 19 as a guest co-host on week six.
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Leah Remini returned as guest co-host on season 21 during weeks six and seven.
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In 2013, Leah Remini joined the cast of the TV Land comedy The Exes, filling a recurring role starting in season 3.
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Leah Remini portrayed Suzanne, a renowned psychotherapist and best-selling author.
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In March 2017, it was announced Leah Remini would reunite with Kevin James on the season finale of Kevin Can Wait.
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In June 2017, it was announced Leah Remini was upped to a series regular beginning with season 2.
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In 2017, Leah Remini co-starred in the comedy films Mad Families, The Clapper, and Handsome.
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In June 2022, Leah Remini was named a judge on the seventeenth season of Fox's dance competition series So You Think You Can Dance, replacing Matthew Morrison.
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Leah Remini began 2021 as the host of the Game Show Network original series People Puzzler.
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Leah Remini was a co-host in the first season of the CBS daytime talk show, The Talk, which premiered October 18,2010.
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Leah Remini had us fired all the while calling me and Holly her friend.
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Leah Remini released her memoir, entitled Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, on November 3,2015.
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Leah Remini was a member of the Church of Scientology from the age of 9.
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In July 2013, Leah Remini left Scientology, owing to policies that forbid members from questioning the management of Church leader David Miscavige, which she believed was corrupt; the reported abuse of members of its Sea Org religious order; its policy of "disconnection"; and its practice of branding those who have left the Church of their own accord as "suppressive persons" and the fair gaming tactics that Scientology has used for decades.
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Leah Remini then filed a "knowledge report" in which she asserted that Miscavige, Cruise, and other senior Scientology members engaged in behavior that was inconsistent with Church rules.
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Leah Remini was "subjected to years of 'interrogations' and 'thought modification'" that led to her being blackballed within Scientology.
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Fellow parishioners with whom Leah Remini had been friends for decades wrote internal reports about her, resulting in a Church investigation into her family.
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Writer and director Paul Haggis, who had previously been the most famous person to publicly disavow Scientology, wrote an open letter, published by The Hollywood Reporter, thanking Leah Remini for standing by him after he left Scientology and praised her "enormous amount of integrity and compassion".
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In October 2013, it was reported that Leah Remini had been subpoenaed to testify in a lawsuit in Comal County, Texas, against Scientology and David Miscavige, regarding acts of alleged harassment and surveillance against Monique Rathbun, who was married to ex-Scientology executive Mark Rathbun.
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Monique Rathbun's attorney, Ray Jeffery, said he wanted Leah Remini to give a deposition in the hopes she could testify that Miscavige has vast influence over the operations of the Church and had to have known about the alleged harassment.
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Leah Remini met actor Angelo Pagan at a Cuban restaurant in 1996.
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Leah Remini had left school with just an 8th-grade education, which she attributes to her involvement with Scientology.
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In May 2021, Leah Remini was accepted into an associate degree program in liberal arts at New York University, saying:.