Karen#1
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[Jason Lee returned to acting last year in Netflix series The Residence]
Thank you to the reader who brought our attention to the great profile of former skateboard pro, sometimes actor, and former Eagle Rock photography shop owner Jason Lee at Defector by writer Nate Rogers.
Rogers does a wonderful job recounting the charmed life of Lee, who seemed to fall into one great gig after another while hardly trying. But then he ran into stiff winds when he dared to ask Lee about Scientology, which about a decade ago the actor said he’d left.
Rogers was caught by surprise: Lee could have easily dismissed the subject with a simple, “yeah, I left that, and I don’t have much to say about it,” but instead turned it into a very uncomfortable moment, as he tried to make Rogers believe that he’d committed some kind of journalistic sin for bringing it up at all.
Then, Lee had his attorneys threaten the national magazine that Rogers was writing the profile for last year, and successfully killed the article.
Now, Lee’s photography shop has closed, and Rogers got the story out in Defector, and it’s getting a lot of attention.
Smart, Jason, real smart.
This all reminded us of a similar encounter we had with Lee and his touchiness about Scientology some 15 years ago, in 2011. (Yikes, that’s a long time.)
We were at the Village Voice at the time, and Lee had just started up an account at Twitter for the first time.
Kevin Smith, who had directed Lee in Mallrats, was very excited about Jason joining Twitter and put out word about it: “BRODIE-MAN! NOOTCHIE-NOOTCHIES! His name ain’t Earl - it’s @THATJasonLee! And now he’s on Twitter! Give him a welcome, but no Stink-Palming!”
Then, a fan named Sean Coleman, with just 6 Twitter followers, replied to Smith, asking, “is Jason lee a scientologist do u ever talk to him about it he was my idol before I found out”
Within minutes, Lee posted a reply: “Wow @djcolee @ThatKevinSmith way to publicly demonstrate your ignorance. I’m the same person I’ve always been, idiot. Know before you judge.”
Lee then followed that up with this: “My comment to @djcolee is the last anything Scientology-related will ever come up. I won’t defend it, nor do I need to. Read a book.”
So touchy! We pointed out that we’d written about how Scientology’s celebrities are drilled in training routines to talk publicly about the all the wonderful benefits they’ve received from L. Ron Hubbard’s books and lectures, but not to actually talk about Hubbard’s “technology” itself.
But then, to our surprise, Lee directed a tweet at us after we had pointed out his aggressive response to the curious fan.
At that point, Marc Headley jumped into the conversation…
Read more:
Jason Lee gets touchy about Scientology (again), even though he left it a decade ago
Thank you to the reader who brought our attention to the great profile of former skateboard pro, sometimes actor, and former Eagle Rock photography shop owner Jason Lee at Defector by writer Nate Rogers.
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