When Elisabeth Moss won her first Emmy in 2017 for her performance in The Handmaid’s Tale, she thanked her mother, who was watching from the audience, in her acceptance speech for teaching Moss, “You can be kind and f**king bad**. Backstage in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Moss defended her swearing onstage (bleeped for the TV audience), saying, “You guys got off easy. That was nothing.”
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Cussing came up again this week in an interview Moss – who stars in the new Apple TV+ series Shining Girls – gave to the New Yorker. The interviewer asked her to respond to a later story from in which a “Scientology whistleblower” categorized profanity as “almost a sacrament” in Scientology and the importance of well-timed f-bombs to Scientology founder Science- Fiction, chronicling writer L. Ron Hubbard, who once served in the United States Navy. (Everyone knows the Sailor’s Curse, right?) Hubbard was also the son of a naval officer.
article also links swearing to the “tone scale” in Scientology, where members are said to adjust the way they communicate with someone based on that person’s perceived importance to them: “Not everyone needs to swear. Journalists and gays, for example, score a “1.1” on the scale, meaning “covert hostility.”
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Moss was born in Scientology to parents including a father of a jazz musician. Unlike some prominent former members of Scientology who joined her parents as young children but later left them, most notably Leah Remini, Moss has remained with the controversial Church of Scientology throughout her adulthood. And while she says she doesn’t want something like the religion, accused of many abusive practices, to distract viewers and compare Scientology to romantic dalliances or hobbies — “I know she just broke up with this person , or I know she likes to do hot yoga or whatever” — she also spoke vigorously about the sacrament story.
“It pissed me off,” Moss said, calling the story a “lie” and saying, “I didn’t deserve that, and it was wrong.” But a former Church of Scientology executive who also told The New Yorker is quoted as emphasizing the importance Scientology places on communication in general as a “fundamental concept sold to new people to bring them into Scientology.”
Former church leader Mike Rinder said: “You can’t say that’s a lie.
Is swearing a part of communication for Scientology believers, one that is officially sanctioned or mandated? The church has denied this in statements. But as with many things Scientology, who knows.
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