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Actor Andrew Keegan has finally addressed rumors that he started a cult.
Appearing on iHeartRadio’s “Pod Meets World” podcast Monday, the “10 Things I Hate About You” actor said he became “immersed in the culture and the community” of Venice Beach after moving to California in his 20s.
“There was this interesting group of hippie types, if you will, in Venice,” Keegan, 45, told hosts Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle.
“I’m sure if you went on the west side, there’s definitely a lot of spirituality. I was connected with some folks and we had this opportunity. There was the old Hare Krishna temple… and it was sitting there empty and we were like, ‘Yo, why don’t we just get some people together and let’s open this place up?'”
Keegan and his pals went on to open a “spiritual community center” in 2014 which they called Full Circle.
“Looking back, it was insane. I was putting down 10s of thousands of dollars, but we opened it up and spent three years and really did build an amazing friend group,” he shared. “We went through something really significant from 2014 to 2017.”
The “7th Heaven” alum said opening the center was his way of doing something “positive for the community.”
But just months after Full Circle’s doors opened, rumors of cult-like activity began to swirl, which were only heightened by a Vice article titled “One of the Stars of 10 Things I Hate About You Started a Religion.”
“I look back at it now and I’m like, I don’t know anybody else who is being called a cult leader, so it’s kind of like a badge of honor,” Keegan quipped, adding that Full Circle was the “opposite of what you could imagine.”
“They just really created a very interesting, colorful story and put it together,” he explained.
“We did almost 1,000 events in three years, and it was actually really hard. It was really beneficial to a lot of people, I still hear about it now, where people are like, ‘That was such a great time.’”
“There was no doctrine,” Keegan continued. “We were just getting people together. The Co-Creator’s Handbook was the handbook we used. For all intents and purposes, it was a really cool community center for a bunch of people in Venice for a few years.”
Full Circle’s community center permanently shut its doors in 2017.
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