Andrew Keegan has pushed back against claims that a spiritual group he once ran should be labelled a ‘cult’.
A 2014 Vice piece alleged the 10 Things I Hate About You star had effectively ‘started his own religion’ through Full Circle, a Venice, California-based community he set up in the mid-2010s.
Keegan recently addressed the long-running rumours while speaking with Josh McBride on the McBride Rewind podcast, revisiting what Full Circle was and how it was portrayed at the time.
“I led a spiritual community in the heart of Venice, and it was called Full Circle,” Keegan said, as he took aim at what he described as ‘clickbait headlines’ that shaped the narrative around the project.
Keegan continued: “There’s just a lot of bulls*** out there. You do a good thing, you bring people together, and sure it’s a church, sure I’m an actor, and sure there are some horrific stories around people handling control and power and spirituality in the wrong way, but that is not at all what it was.”
Now 47, the actor argued that the term itself is often applied too broadly, calling it ‘unfair’ how people define it. He added: “Cult is also the core word for culture, and Venice is a culturally diverse and culturally rich area, but spirituality can mean many things to people, and it’s important. We had a saying at the temple, ‘It’s not serious, it’s important’.
“People should look deep into themselves as they’re growing in life to heal because we’ve all had traumas, and it was just very simple in a lot of ways, just getting people together.”
He also described Full Circle as something built around a community-focused book, before turning to how he believes modern life has chipped away at people’s sense of togetherness.
“The more we’re disconnected with devices and technology, the more we’re missing what we really are, which is like we’re a village, we’re a community,” the 10 Things I Hate About You star added.
When discussing what it took to keep the group running, Keegan said it required significant commitment, both personally and financially, and explained that the programming ranged across multiple wellbeing practices.
He added: “It was a lot of work. I put a lot of money into it, just to support the idea, and it was three years. A lot of people, even to this day, I get messages about how it was such a great experience in their life, and there are a lot of things from sound healing to yoga to meditation, you know, we did 1,000 events in three years.”