Matt Willis has revealed the Church of Scientology tried to break up his relationship with Emma Willis.

Emma and Matt Willis

Emma and Matt Willis

The Busted musician has opened up on how he became "fully invested" in the movement - which believes humans are immortal spiritual beings - until he realised they were trying to separate him from his wife.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper, he said: "What I was taking from it was that your environment, your friends and the people you’re closest to are your problem.

"I was like, ‘What are you f****** getting at here?’ They were like, ‘There’s someone in your life who’s actually draining you, who’s a negative force, and it’s normally the person closest to you’.

"And it’s like, ‘I think they’re trying to split my f****** marriage up now’. They were trying to force this weird opinion on me. When I look back at it, I was like, ‘Are you trying to separate me from everybody else?’ "

Matt and Emma have been married since 2008 and have kids Isabelle, 11, Ace, nine, and Trixie, four, together.

The 37-year-old star joined the church - which was founded by sci-fi author L Ron Hubbard in the 1950s - while he was recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, and visited the London headquarters every day.

He underwent a process called "auditing", and explained: "I held these metal things and he tested me and I suddenly realised I was in somewhere called the Church of Scientology. I didn’t know anything about it.

“I answered some questions and a little dial moved and I was like, ‘Wow, what’s this?’ They said to me, ‘We think we can help you. You do a simple course and you come out the other end a different person’.

"I was like, ‘Cool, all right, sounds good’. Little commitment. Fine.”

Matt - who the church left after three months but still hears from its members - warned people against getting involved, and described it as a "very, very weird place".

He added: “I just never went back, stopped picking up my phone to them. But they rang me every day for a month and they drop into my texts every six months, eight months, out the blue, like, ‘Hey, Matt, how are you doing?' ”

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