Carl Lentz, once a “rockstar pastor” known for his close relationship withJustin Bieber, is opening up about his cheating scandal in FX’s new documentary series,The Secrets of Hillsong.
The four-part series, which premiers Friday, chronicles thescandals of the famous megachurch, and features the first interviews with Carl and Laura since they were pushed out of Hillsong Church in 2020.
Carl, now 44, helped get Hillsong’s N.Y.C. branch up and running in 2010 and rose to fame with the church’s success, but was eventually ousted due to “moral failures,” admitting a day later that he had been “unfaithful in my marriage.”
In the series' first episode, Carl referred to his wife as “love of his life” in footage from one sermon. At another point, while at home in Florida in 2022, Carl began crying as he addressed his trepidation about participating in the documentary. “I’m so nervous about how this is going to be portrayed, but I can’t control that,” he said.
Carl Lentz.FX
In October 2020, Hillsong leadership were informed that “incriminating text messages” had been found from Carl to a woman named Ranin Karim, according to the documentary. Karim later identified herselfas his alleged mistressin an interview withVanity Fairpublished weeks after his firing.
“I just remember feeling like, am I in an alternate universe right now?” Carl said during the second episode. “The hardest part of this was just trying not to look my wife in the eye, ever.”
Laura Lentz.FX
Laura was in shock upon first learning from her husband that he’d been unfaithful. “Carl was like, ‘Hey, can I talk to you for a second?’ As soon as he shut the door…my heart just dropped,” she recalled. “He basically said, ‘I’ve been unfaithful to you.'”
“There are some things that you can recover from. There’s other things that I’ll never recover from,” Carl said. “Just the sound of her voice, the kind of cry that she had was like no other cry I’ve ever heard. Nobody should go through that, especially a wife that is flawless in character. I told her the best I could at that time and at that time I wasn’t even fully honest.”
“She wasn’t mad, she was just so broken,” he added. “People who have walked through infidelity know what I’m talking about right now.”
On a Zoom call with the couple, board members and church founderBrian Houston, who went on toresign in 2022amid complaints that he behaved inappropriately towards two women, questioned Carl about his relationship with the Lentz family’s nanny, Leona Kimes, also a church member.
“He hadn’t told me this part yet,” Laura said in the episode.
Kimes had been a trusted part of the family, but Laura had suspected something was going on. “I’d sometimes get these little feelings. And then one night I found them in a compromising position,” she said. “I was angry and I definitely freaked out.”
But afterwards, they “never talked about it again.”
Carl Lentz and wife Laura.Charley Gallay/Getty
Addressing her allegations in the second episode, Carl said, “I am responsible for allowing an inappropriate relationship to develop in my house with someone that worked for us.” However, he went on to claim that “any notion of abuse is categorically false.”
In a previous statement, an attorney for the Lentzs told PEOPLE, “Laura and Carl Lentz vehemently deny the allegations and, in addition to that, have irrefutable proof the events did not happen as Leona Kimes has described.”
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“I’m tired of this damage, I’m tired of this wreckage, I’m tired of putting people I love through pain,” he said. “I did those things, those are on me, I take responsibility for those. The rest of my life I’ll be making amends where I can. And it’s also my job to go figure out how the hell that happened.”
Over a week before the show premiered, Carl shared that the couple’s decision to take part in the documentary was"part of the healing" process.
“For the last 3 yearsmy entire focus has been fighting for my wife and my kids,” Lentz wrote in the social media post. “In order to do that, seeking sobriety and healing had to run parallel with those goals.”
“Although we have a long way to go, with a lot of work, a lot of honesty and a lot of prayer, we have found ourselves in a beautiful, happy and deliberately honest place,” he added, sharing that he and his wife are still together, and just celebrated their 20th anniversary.
He went on to share that they’ve moved on to a new “supportive” church, but that he is no longer preaching.
The Secrets of Hillsongepisodes 1-2 premiere on FX on Friday, and will be available to stream on Hulu the following day. Episodes 3-4 will premiere May 26.
source: people.com
