Need a little blast from the past? Ten years ago, tabloids circulated the rumor that Andrew Keegan ran a cult.
But if you ask the10 Things I Hate About You actor today, he denies ever taking part in any cult. In a new episode of Danielle Fishel’s podcast, Pod Meets World, Keegan once again addressed the old allegations.
“You mean when I woke up one day and I was anointed a cult leader?” he joked with Fishel and her co-hosts, Rider Strong and Will Friedle. Keegan described how he moved to Venice California around 2013 and “got immersed in the culture and the community” of people who were “hippies” to start the Full Circle spiritual movement.
Keegan recalled how he and this group of people took over an abandoned temple.
“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,’” he explained in the clip above.
While his intention was to “do some positive things for the community,” it ended up being a very costly endeavor.
“Looking back, [it] was insane,” he confessed. “I was putting down thousands of, tens of thousands of dollars, and we opened it up, and we spent three years and we did build an amazing friend group.”
That’s when headlines started popping up about Keegan being a cult leader—but he said that wasn’t the reality.
“We really just got together, and we did a Sunday thing and did almost a thousand events in three years and it was actually really hard, and it was really beneficial to a lot of people,” he shared, describing that what they built was a “cool community center for a bunch of people in Venice.”
Fishel commented that Full Circle sounded like Burning Man, which Keegan agreed was an apt comparison.
“Again, it wasn’t something with such a specific agenda. At the time it just kind of evolved from a group of people,” he said, jokingly adding that he views being labeled a “cult leader” as a “badge of honor.”
Full Circle shuttered in 2017 due to financial issues. In addition to 10 Things I Hate About You, Keegan is also known for his roles in 7th Heaven and Party of Five.
