Actor Andrew Keegan recently addressed rumors that he started a cult in California, insisting that he was just “getting people together” in Los Angeles’ Venice neighborhood.
The 45-year-old celebrity is best known for appearing on television shows including “Trinkets,” “Moesha,” “Party of Five” and “7th Heaven” as well as starring in films such as “10 Things I Hate About You” (1999), “The Broken Hearts Club” (2000) and “O” (2001).
Keegan appeared on the “Pod Meets World” podcast this week and discussed rumors that he had previously started a cult.
“You mean when I woke up one day and I was anointed a cult leader?” he said while laughing, going on to talk about how he moved to Venice Beach and “got immersed in the culture and the community.”
“There was this interesting group of hippie types, if you will, in Venice. I’m sure if you went on the west side, there’s definitely a lot of spirituality,” he said. “I was connected with some folks and we had this opportunity. This old Hare Krishna Temple, it was sitting there empty and we were like, ‘Why don’t we get some people together and let’s open this place up?’”
The group was previously part of the Occupy Wall Street movement and wanted to “do some positive things for the community.” They named their movement Full Circle, per Variety.
“Looking back, it was insane. I was putting down tens of thousands of dollars, but we opened it up and spent three years and really did build an amazing friend group,” Keegan continued. “We went through something really significant from 2014 to 2017.”
The actor went on to explain how the cult rumors began after a Vice reporter put out an article entitled, “One of the Stars of ’10 Things I Hate About You’ Started a Religion.” The interviewer described meeting a group member named Third Eye, who was allegedly part of the “inner circle” of “enlightened” members. Third Eye said Keegan was the group’s leader and had the “ultimate say on all things.”
“I probably should have had a little bit more media training at the time,” the actor said during the podcast interview. “They just really created a very interesting, colorful story and put it together… we really just got together and did a Sunday thing. 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.’”
Keegan insisted that his group was “the opposite of what you would imagine.”
“There was no doctrine. 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.”
Podcast host Danielle Fishel suggested that what Keegan described “sounds like a group of people at Burning Man more than a group of people at [the notorious cult] Heaven’s Gate.”
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“But ‘cult leader’ kind of leans unto the Heaven’s Gate,” Keegan replied. “Maybe we should have come up with a different name. I thought Full Circle was pretty good, you know, what goes around comes around. I don’t know.”
He added, “It wasn’t something with such a specific agenda at the time. It just evolved from a group of people. We had thousands of people come through over the years and just a ton of events and dinner parties. There was actually a podcast I heard recently where they were talking about it and trying to figure it out. At the end, they kind of landed on, it seems like a cool place to hang out — and that’s what it was.”
