TV's Dharma Hiring Her Cult Pals

Fox News/September 5, 2001
By Roger Friedman

Has ABC's Dharma and Greg become Scientology central for sitcoms? The group already has a vocal member in star Jenna Elfman, who plays Dharma. Elfman is the protégé of acting teacher Milton Katselas, also a devotee of the pay-as-you-go cult favored by Tom Cruise, John Travolta and others.

Last spring, avowed and outspoken cult member Kirstie Alley appeared in Dharma and Greg's season cliffhanger as, of all things, a marriage counselor. (It was ironic since Alley in real life had a disastrous marriage to actor Parker Stevenson that ended in an acrimonious divorce.)

Now the show, which is produced by former Cybill producer Chuck Lorre, has announced a full-time cast addition: Juliette Lewis, former drug addict and star of awful movies like Kalifornia and Natural Born Killers. Lewis, according to reports, will play Dharma's hippie-like childhood friend.

Lewis is one of Scientology's foremost celebrity zombies. Last summer at a Creative Coalition panel discussion in Los Angeles about violence in the media, Lewis - a last-minute addition - pushed the Scientology agenda the minute she got her chance. She ambushed moderator Carl Bernstein when she announced that what was really affecting children today was not violence in the media - such as her own movies.

The real culprit, she said, was psychotropic drugs. Scientologists, including Alley and Elfman, are vehemently against kids with illnesses like Attention Deficit Disorder getting psychiatric treatment or drugs like Ritalin. (This is because the cult depends on alienated kids, and kids with learning disorders and other problems to come to them instead. Ritalin is probably Scientology's worst nightmare.)

So what's next, John Travolta as Greg's long lost cousin? Mimi Rogers as his aunt? Will Dharma and Greg simply become a repository for more Scientologists with dead careers? (Since the cancellation of her dreadful Veronica's Closet series, Alley has been relegated to Pier 1 Imports commercials. Lewis has been unemployable for years.)

Even the atrociously pandering Entertainment Tonight questioned what was going on last spring when Alley did her star turn, by the way.

Dharma and Greg's very affable co-executive producer Bill Prady told me that the propensity of Scientologists is merely a manifestation of who Elfman's friends are. "Really, stunt casting is the bane of my existence.

We go to the cast and say, 'Who are your friends?' And, 'Who can you get?' Jenna's friends with Kirstie and with Juliette, so they came. One of our writers is friends with Bob Dylan, that's how we got him. Right now we're hoping to get Olivia Newton-John, who's a friend of someone here. It's really that simple."

Just as a PS-slash-non sequitur, I noticed that someone named Rachel Sweet is listed as a writer/producer on the show. The only Rachel Sweet I ever heard of came from Ohio and was a one-time 16-year-old bombshell punk rocker from 1978-82.

Her debut album on Stiff Records, with the songs "Who Does Lisa Like?" and Elvis Costello's "Stranger in the House," was a classic. If it's the same Sweet, I'll definitely be watching.