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Nazanin Boniadi Speaks! Or Rather, Raps, About Scientology’s “Blind Alley”

Well, we’ve been looking forward to bringing you this for some time now, and thanks to the folks over at Gawker, it’s now live, for all the world to see.

The too-cool-for-school commenters over there will crap all over the video of course, which is as predictable as the sun rising in the morning.

But we trust our readers will see the value in this unique video.

MIKE RINDER RAPS! Seriously, it’s dope.

John Cook (who has some impressive Scientology reporting in his past) was good enough to post our entire backstory of the unusual video. We’ll post it here, too…

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Back in September, Maureen Orth uncorked a beauty in Vanity Fair magazine. She wrote that in 2004, the Church of Scientology held “auditions” of young Scientologist actresses to find a new girlfriend for its biggest celebrity, Tom Cruise. One of those women was British-Iranian actress Nazanin Boniadi, who was then groomed to be the perfect mate for Tom. According to several ex-Scientologists Orth interviewed for her story, Boniadi lived with Cruise from November 2004 to January 2005 until he tired of her and had her sent away.

Boniadi herself, however, didn’t talk to Vanity Fair, and Orth was also unable to find any photographs showing Cruise and Boniadi together.

But I was assured by the ex-Scientologists I know, and who are friends with Boniadi, that the story was true, and that Nazanin was deeply disillusioned about the church and about Tom Cruise.

Then I got a tip from Marc Headley, one of the former church members interviewed for Orth’s story. He said that several months ago, some ex-Scientologists had been goofing around and had recorded a rap song at the home studio of Tiziano Lugli, a former church member who is also a music producer. The song, Headley told me, ridiculed Scientology leader David Miscavige, the harsh life working for the church, and its celebrities.

Among the ex-Scientologists who had helped sing on the rap song, he added, was Nazanin Boniadi.

In November, I was in Los Angeles and was hanging out with a British television crew that is making an hour-long documentary about Scientology for Channel 4 that will air in March. I told them about the song, and they were anxious to see if we could get Lugli to play it for us. We met him at his Hollywood Hills home, and he took us into the studio.

He confirmed what Headley had told me, that after Headley had come up with a bit of rhyme, they thought it would be funny to make an entire song. So when various ex-Scientologists came by to visit Tiziano, he asked them to come up with a few lines and then record them.

Among the people who performed on it were Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, two formerly top-ranking executives in the church. Lugli sings on it, as does his wife, actress Jamie (Sorrentini) Lugli. And Lugli tells me he wrote the lines that we hear Nazanin Boniadi perform…

“But we all know how it is
This ain’t no road to freedom
It’s a blind alley, like Kirstie Alley
Travolta, and Cruise, but we ain’t no fools”

Lugli told me he had also written more lines for her that spoke directly to the way she’d been treated by Cruise. She said she’d rather sing another song that she’d written, a weepy ballad about her “faith” being betrayed by someone who was going to be visited by “demons.”

(Lugli played that song for us, but he would not allow us to film him doing it.)

To finish his first draft of the rap song, Lugli himself raps the words he had written for Boniadi, and raises his voice artificially (which is obvious when you hear it)…

“My name is Naz
You might not know who I am
But trust me, I’m sure DM
Is now shitting his pants
I was pimped out
Treated like a prostitute
I was used and abused
You really thought I was a fool
My integrity has got a price
That your creeps can’t buy
I won’t bend, I won’t break,
I will not hesitate to expose your plans
To the entire nation
Your population needs
Some serious emancipation”

Again, it’s important to point out that Nazanin did not perform these lines herself.

But she did contribute a few lines that name Scientology’s three biggest celebrities, and not in a flattering light.

Lugli played the rap song for us three separate times, in each instance with the British TV crew filming him. And I recorded this video on my flip cam.

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