EXCLUSIVE: First Interview with the Principal of Will & Jada Smith’s Shuttered Scientology School « The Underground Bunker

In 2007, Jacqueline Olivier was hired by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith to turn their home-schooling experiment into an actual bricks-and-mortar institution. A year later, the New Village Leadership Academy opened its doors as protesters showed up to picket the school — by then, it was known that the Smiths had asked Olivier to use L. Ron Hubbard’s “Study Technology” as the school’s guiding curriculum. (Study Technology is also a significant part of coursework in the Church of Scientology, which Hubbard founded.)

But Olivier assured the public that the private school in Calabasas, California was strictly secular, and she played down the influence of Study Tech. Then, a year later, she was fired and replaced by a woman named Franca Campopiano, also known as Piano Foster. At the time, news reports suggested that Olivier had not embraced the use of Hubbard’s ideas strongly enough, which is why Campopiano, a Smith family friend, was brought in to replace her.

Now, for the first time, Olivier is talking about her two years working with the Smiths. She’s no longer playing down the influence of Study Technology. In fact, she tells the Underground Bunker that Scientology’s influence in the school was near total, and she knew that calling it secular was a sham. Her departure, she says, was definitely about her not being “with the program.”

EXCLUSIVE: First Interview with the Principal of Will & Jada Smith’s Shuttered Scientology School « The Underground Bunker