Leah Remini’s split from Scientology has been a difficult one, but she has at least one big supporter in her corner.

Director and screenwriter Paul Haggis, who is known for films like “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby,” has come to the former “King of Queens” star’s defense in a public way, penning a letter of support in The Hollywood Reporter. The 60-year-old went through a similar situation when he parted ways with the church in 2009, and gives insight into what Remini is going through.

Noting that Remini, 43, was one of only two Scientologist friends who didn’t “disconnect” from him when he loudly left the organization, he said they remained friendly ― though not close friends ― which didn’t go unnoticed by key members of the church.
“Leah got in trouble because of me, because when I was ‘declared’ a ‘Suppressive Person’ and shunned, she came to my defense ― without me ever knowing it,” Haggis wrote. “She had shouting matches with Tommy Davis, then the church spokesman, who had come to try and keep her quiet. The fact that she fought within the system so resolutely for so long, never making her feelings public, is a testament to how much she believed in the basic goodness of her friends and the institution.”

Haggis also addressed the reason why Remini’s relationship with the church first started to unravel: as previously reported, because she questioned leader David Miscavige about the whereabouts of his wife, Shelly, who hasn’t been seen in public since 2007. The incident is said to have taken place at Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s Italian wedding in 2006. Calling it news to him that Remini had “run afoul of the church by challenging … David Miscavige, who is held to be infallible,” Haggis said he had found himself in a similar situation.

“When I was leaving and was visited by waves of angry friends and a phalange of top Scientology executives, trying to convince me to … resign quietly, I made a similar mistake by insisting they look into the charges of abuse detailed by the Tampa Bay Times,” Haggis wrote referring to this special report. “I was working on a film about Martin Luther King Jr. at that moment and made the polite suggestion that even great leaders like Dr. King were human and fallible. Two of the senior church leaders leapt to their feet and shouted at me, ‘How dare you compare a great man like David Miscavige to Martin Luther King!’ I ended the meeting at that point, thanking them for coming.”