Jenna Elfman's AMA overwhelmed by Scientology questions (2017)

In April 2017, actress Jenna Elfman held a Reddit 'Ask Me Anything' to promote her ABC sitcom 'Imaginary Mary.' Elfman is a longstanding and openly practicing Scientologist, and within minutes the thread was overtaken not by questions about the show but by a flood of questions about the Church of Scientology, its leadership, and controversies surrounding it. IndieWire described the session as having 'became an insane Scientology interrogation.'

The questions ranged from mocking to pointed. Some were jokes referencing Scientology cosmology; others were direct and serious, including questions about Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige who has rarely been seen publicly for years, and about Leah Remini, the actress whose A&E series documented former members' accounts of the organization. IndieWire and Exclaim! reported that one widely upvoted comment asked whether Elfman felt empathy toward people who said their families had been harmed by the church.

Elfman engaged with very little of it. Exclaim! reported that 'nearly every question in the entire AMA went unanswered,' and multiple outlets noted that the actress addressed only a small handful of show-related questions while the Scientology questions dominated the upvotes. The disconnect between what she was prepared to discuss and what the community wanted to ask produced what several commenters described, per IndieWire, as one of the most disastrous AMAs they had seen.

As with other promotional AMAs that went sideways, some redditors speculated that newly created accounts in the thread were posting softball, show-related questions, an allegation users raised about the session rather than a confirmed fact. The broader dynamic was familiar: a celebrity arrives to promote a project, but the open format invites the audience to redirect the conversation toward the most contentious aspect of the guest's public life, and a guest unwilling or unable to engage leaves the thread feeling evasive.

The episode drew coverage from entertainment and culture outlets including IndieWire, Fox News (republishing New York Post reporting), Exclaim! and SheKnows, and it became a recurring example in writing about how the AMA format can backfire on guests with controversial affiliations. It illustrated a structural feature of Reddit AMAs that distinguishes them from conventional press: the questions, and which ones rise to the top, are chosen by the crowd, not the publicist.