There are fear mongers who talk about Islam as somehow it is an incubator of hate... remember Christians, like the Westboro Baptist Church, are just as capable of promoting intolerance.

There have been times when I've felt inappropriately emotional. I remember making 'The Most Hated Family in America' about the Westboro Baptist Church, and being on the way to a funeral of a U.S. soldier with the Phelps family; they were going to picket the funeral.

I think people are so immersed in the anti-Scientology mindset by consuming tabloid media and stories about space aliens. It's baffling. When I say I want to see a more positive side of the church, all I'm saying is I want to get past these headlines that talk about aliens and Tom Cruise jumping on a sofa.

Not counting the brand of Sunni Islam practised by the so-called Islamic State, there is probably no religion in the world that comes in for more flak than Scientology.

We have a double agenda of trying to deliver something exciting that people will talk about and will brighten their day and will amaze people and make us proud to have created an object of beauty. And on the other hand being true to the story.

In my normal way of doing things, there's a little bit of 'going native' that takes place, where you're in a world long enough, you can't really help but start to see things in a nuanced, more humanistic way. Just because you're with people and you start to, in general, slightly like the people you're with.