Actor John Stamos has shared his near-recruitment experience with the Church of Scientology in the 1980s.
In his memoir, “If You Would Have Told Me,” released in October 2023, the Full House star detailed this encounter.
According to an excerpt published in the New York Post, Stamos’s brush with Scientology began through Mia, a former assistant to his acting teacher.
He described how she approached him to return some books he had forgotten, adding an extra, hefty book to the stack.
Stamos recalled: “I’m walking to my car and Mia runs out and hands me my workbooks. ‘Hey, you forgot these.’ She adds an extra book, the size of a brick, to my stack. ‘Start with this one,’ she says, smiling. ‘I think it will open your eyes to some amazing things.’”
The actor mentioned how he started reading the book while working at a restaurant called Yellow Basket.
“I crack open the book while on my shift at Yellow Basket [restaurant]. There’s a lot about control: controlling your reactionary mind, controlling energy, controlling space and controlling time.”
Stamos also recounted meeting Mia at another location, which he later identified as the Celebrity Centre for Scientology in Hollywood, California.
He described the place as “grand, ornate and creepy as f**k,” comparing it to “a cross between Chateau Marmont, Disney’s Haunted Mansion and a mental hospital.” Despite his reservations, he entered the building and participated in an “auditing session” with the organization.
The Church of Scientology’s website describes auditing sessions as a process to “bring people from a condition of spiritual blindness to spiritual existence.”
Stamos described the session: “All I can think about is the Wayback Machine from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show deployed by the genius beagle, Mr Peabody, and his adopted human boy, Sherman, to time travel through different dimensions.”
Part of the session involved a peculiar contraption, with Stamos writing: “I’m handed two round things that look like cans. I put one to my ear and the other to my mouth and mimic talking into an old-timey telephone: ‘Hello, there.’”
The actor then recalled being questioned by a “weird little man” about “committing crimes,” “negative thoughts about Scientology or [founder] L Ron Hubbard,” and some “strange sex inquiries.”
Ultimately, Stamos was deemed ineligible for the organization.
On the Friends In High Places podcast, he elaborated: “I was doing a Peabody and Sherman [impression] and they didn’t like that. Then, I was just f**king around so much, they said, ‘Get out [and] get going.’ They just kicked me out.”
Stamos concluded in his memoir: “The Wayback Machine needle jumps in the corner, and Mia looks disappointed. Apparently, I’m not Scientology material. Darn it.”