Leah Remini Finds out Her Dad Died 1 Month Ago

The King of Queens star Leah Remini shared a heartbreaking post on her Instagram page Sunday, revealing that she just learned about her father’s death a month ago. According to Remini, there was a funeral already, and she and her sister Nicole had no idea. Remini hoped to fix her relationship with her father before his death and blamed Scientology for not being able to repair it.

“On Friday, I received a message from my sister Nicole, who had been contacted by a stranger passing on his condolences for the passing of our father, George Anthony Remini,” Remini wrote, alongside a gallery of throwback photos with her father. “We had no idea that he had died a month ago.”

Remini said they did not know her father was ill before his death.

“A funeral came and went and none of us knew anything about it. We were not able to say goodbye. He was not able to redeem himself, to ask for forgiveness for his failures and hurts, to become a better man to those of us who couldn’t help but love him,” Remini wote. “If you read my book, you’ll know my father and I had a difficult relationship, but I always forgave him with a daughter’s painfully endless love and hope.”

Despite his “neglect and abuse,” Remini hoped he would one day acknowledge what he did to his children.

“That alone would have been healing in its own way. We never got that, yet I can’t help but grieve. I am angry at myself for crying for someone who didn’t ever cry for me. I am angry that I still wanted this man’s love,” she wrote. “I’m angry that the last chapter in our relationship was dictated by Scientology.”

Remini went on to claim the Church of Scientology had a role in their estrangement before his death. In their response to Remini’s A&E series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, the church often released videos featuring George Remini. In these videos, George claimed Remini did not care about her own family and refused to help him pay for cancer treatment.

“Scientology took my dad in as a pawn against me and likely robbed him of any last ounce of heart that might have been left in him,” Remini wrote. “I’m angry that Scientology found his personal weak spots and got him on board not with their beliefs but with their smear campaign against me. That was his last presence in my life.”

Remini added, “Knowing my father, after taking the offer from Scientology to betray me, he wouldn’t have thought that he could ever come back from that in our relationship. If he thought that, though, he would have been wrong. I would have forgiven him as I always did. The little girls inside of my sisters and me will never forgive Scientology for taking away our last chance to have the one thing we always wanted from our father… And that was for him to say ‘I’m sorry and I loved you.’”

Remini’s relationship to her father was fractured to the point that her June 2018 Father’s Day message praised her husband, Angela Pagan, and thanked him for being the “daddy to our daughter that I wish I had.”

Scientology long tried to discredit Remini’s Emmy-winning series and tried to stop it from airing. However, the show ended on Remini’s terms, with the two-hour finale airing in August. The final episode centered on The Ranch actor Danny Masterson.

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