Stamos said it was both his acting idol, John Travolta, and a “hot girl” he met in acting class, who inspired him to go to a meeting at the church’s famed center on Hollywood Boulevard.
John Stamos was nearly a member of the Church of Scientology.
The Fuller House alum recalled the experience during Sunday’s episode of the Friends in High Places podcast.
Stamos was just 17 years old when he said he was allegedly recruited to join the Church by a “hot girl” in his acting class.
“With me, I was in an acting class and there was a hot girl, [who] said to me, ‘You know we’re all meeting at this [place] on Hollywood Boulevard, you should come after [class],'” Stamos shared. “I was working at my dad’s restaurant at the time and I said, ‘Dad, I gotta go.’ So, I went and it was the Scientology building.”
It was both the “hot girl” and his acting idol, famed Scientologist, John Travolta, who inspired Stamos to go to the meeting.
“Seeing [Grease] was like, ‘I wanna be that,” Stamos recalled. “I wanted to be John Travolta, I still do. Well, minus the whatever it is that they do.”
While Travolta joined the Church of Scientology in 1975, Stamos said he ultimately never made it past one of the introductory sessions.
After arriving at the church, Stamos claimed he was brought into the Scientology building and introduced to a machine known as the “E-Meter,” which was made out of two cans. The church claims that its electropsychometer device can indicate changes in emotional states to identify stored engrams and “levels of spiritual distress,” per a description on their website.
Stamos said he immediately started playing around with the device, pretending to have a fake phone conversation.
“I was doing a Peabody and Sherman [impression] and they didn’t like that,” Stamos claimed. “Then, I was just f–king around so much, they said, ‘Get out [and] get going.’ They just kicked me out.”
When podcast host Matt Friend joked that Stamos was “too annoying” to join the church, the 61-year-old actor agreed, adding, “that’s pretty bad, I must have been terrible.”
Stamos previously detailed his experience with the Church of Scientology in his 2023 memoir, If You Would Have Told Me.
“I’m walking to my car and Mia runs out and hands me my workbooks,” Stamos wrote in the book. “‘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.'”
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When Stamos opened the book, he said he read a passage about control and “controlling your reactionary mind, controlling energy, controlling space and controlling time.”
While the book intrigued Stamos at first, he said he soon found the church “creepy as f–k.”
“[One man] begins to question me about committing crimes, asks if I have negative thoughts about Scientology or [founder] L. Ron Hubbard and probes into some strange sex inquiries,” Stamos wrote. “The Wayback Machine needle jumps in the corner, and Mia looks disappointed. Apparently, I’m not Scientology material. Darn it.”
As for the church, they have yet to publicly address Stamos’ claims.
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