As you may or may not know, Elisabeth Moss - who has starred in Mad Men, The West Wing, Top of the Lake and most recently, The Handmaid's Tale - is a Scientologist.
Those who saw her Emmy acceptance speech earlier in the week will know that Moss, excited and elated, kicked the whole thing off with a loud, joyous exclamation of the f-word. The speech was then laced with several more expletives, all of them met with laughter and applause by the audience.
Here's Moss talking about it after the fact with ET.
All grand, except apparently to an ex-Scientologist, the cursing is steeped in Scientology doctrine. Yes, really. According to an interview with THR, the ex-Scientologist who claims he was friends with Moss before he left the controversial religion, cursing is a thing in the religion that has to do with "the tone scale."
Tiziano Lughli, a fashion photographer who spoke to THR following the Emmys, claims that "Scientologists are urged to communicate with 'average people,' and to do so effectively you have to 'go down the tone scale.' So they all use 'fuck, fuck, fuck' every time they talk. It’s fascinating."
Fascinating. Sure, OK. But maybe it's just excitement or something? Not so, according to Lughli. "The quote-unquote philosophy behind it is you match the tone level in order to communicate on the same level of the people with whom you’re communicating. If you’re too 'high-tone,' people will not understand you."
The whole article on THR explores the rich history behind cursing in Scientology, if you fancy an insightful read on cursing and anecdotes about Tom Cruise being fascinated with the topic.
Via THR