NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Gwen Shamblin was a controversial Christian diet guru and the leader of what some call a cult right in the middle of Brentwood.
But Shamblin was also a mom and now, for the first time anywhere, her son is speaking out about what he witnessed at her side through almost all of that controversy.
Michael Shamblin, now 43, saw it all — and he said he also regrets it all.
TONIGHT AT 6: Michael Shamblin talks about his mother
"I look back on my life and go: 'What were we doing? What was I thinking?'" Michael Shamblin said in an exclusive interview with NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
It was, in many ways, the most unlikely of interviews.
For more than 20 years, it’s a story that has fascinated me and a lot of America — the story of how Gwen Shamblin went from being a popular Christian diet guru to what some considered to be a cult leader, heading up the Remnant Fellowship.
Gwen Shamblin, who began her career with a diet program that she called the Weigh Down Workshop, was the focus of NewsChannel 5 investigations in 2001 and 2004.
Two years ago, an HBO Max documentary series — "The Way Down: God, Greed and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin" — suggested, "how members of Remnant behave is a bit like Handmaid's Tale." The series also explored her controversial marriage to actor Joe Lara.
Yet, throughout all the controversies, Michael Shamblin was the one person who I firmly believed would one day have a story to tell.
Now — nearly three years after his mother’s death in a plane crash into Nashville's Percy Priest Lake — Michael was finally ready to speak his truth.
"Twenty years ago, would you ever have imagined that you and I would be sitting down talking like this?" I asked him.
Michael was blunt.
"Phil, 20 years ago, early on in Remnant, you were the devil."
"The devil?"
"Oh, yes. You were Satan incarnate to the Remnant. Of course, Gwen was telling us all of that."
The last time I saw Michael was in 2004 when I was interviewing his mother and another church leader about the child abuse death of an 8-year-old Remnant boy whose parents were taking their cues on parenting from the church.
After the interview, Gwen Shamblin had forced Michael, then 23, to come in front of the cameras to say hello.
"This kills him though, you've got to keep in mind. My son, you know, to see someone attack his mom is hard," Shamblin told us.
During our interview, we were showing Michael the video from that day 20 years ago when he suddenly reacted.
"It did bother me."
"That I was asking those kind of questions..."
"Yes."
"Of your mother."
"It did, to be completely honest. I was bothered."
It was my turn to be blunt.
"You were pissed."
"I was — and that was hard on me."
He continued, "But that's what makes it even more incredible now that I am sitting here, have come full circle, 180. I look as you more as a hero of it all now. And I was just the son that went along with it."
Related: He once thought I was 'the devil.' Now, he's telling me his story
Watch Clips: The Gwen Shamblin Interviews
Michael and I had connected on Twitter more than a year ago when he followed me from an account in the name of Michael S. Black. That's an identity he's now trying to establish professionally, creating profiles on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
"The Michael S. Black type of thing is more of me. It's a person who's tired of being used and abused from Gwen Shamblin."
"The Shamblin name is too toxic for you at this point?" I followed up.
"It has been."
That's even more true in the wake of the HBO Max series released more than two years ago.
"I think they actually did a fantastic job," Michael said. "Of course, Remnant, they're not even allowed to watch that in Remnant — that's how closed of an environment it is."
So what is Michael's view of his mother now?
"Gwen Shamblin Lara was a narcissist," Michael said. "She always had the answer. She knew more than anybody in the room wherever she went."
We noticed that he did not call her "mom" or "mother."
"That's from habit. I quit calling her 'mother' probably around 2010."
"Why?"
"Because we were so at odds."
And what about his views on Remnant Fellowship — where he was once one of the worship leaders?
"People have been hurt, fallen by the wayside, have been victim to it. People have been financially hurt by it. It's hard to call it a church, in my mind. It is a church, but it's a cult."
"You think it is a cult?"
"I do believe it's a cult."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it's a group of people that is devoted to a person: Gwen Shamblin Lara."
Michael said that when his mother's plane crashed into Nashville's Percy Priest Lake in 2021, killing her, her husband Joe Lara, and five Remnant leaders, he was already estranged from the group that he now considers a dangerous cult.
"By that point, I had spent so many years getting abuse from some of these people that I never shed one tear. Not one. And to this day I have never cried about them."
This time, I was stunned by his honesty.
"Not for your mother?"
"The people dying. Nope, never cried for them."
Leaving the church right after that, as his marriage to another Remnant member was falling apart, Michael said he found himself sinking into a major depression.
"I got so depressed that I quit turning on the lights."
That's when he wrote a song he titled "Down," which begins with the lyrics, "Sitting in the darkness, a shadow on the wall."
"Thought I was headed up to angels, but I was actually in decline — and I was down. Down, down, down," the song continues.
To my ears, those words seemed highly reflective of his own journey.
"We were told 'We've got it, we've got the answer.' Remnant knows they have the answer."
"The one true church," I interjected.
"The one true church," he agreed.
That was the part where the thought he was "headed up to angels."
"I wish I could go back and see my earlier self and go, 'There are people being hurt here. You're not 100 percent innocent and perfect, going along with this.' We thought we were heading up, but it was a decline."
The stories on Michael Shamblin simply aren't one piece.
If you missed a portion of the story, you can still catch up.
PART ONE
Michael Shamblin was blunt.
"Phil, 20 years ago, early on in Remnant, you were the devil. You were Satan incarnate to the Remnant. Of course, Gwen was telling us all of that."
Gwen was Gwen Shamblin, the controversial Christian diet guru who created her own church, the Remnant Fellowship, in affluent Brentwood, Tennessee — a church that some now consider to be a cult.
To read more of part one, you can click this link.
PART TWO
Gwen Shamblin was a controversial Christian diet guru and the leader of what some call a cult right in the middle of Brentwood.
But Shamblin was also a mom and now, for the first time anywhere, her son is speaking out about what he witnessed at her side through almost all of that controversy.
Michael Shamblin, now 43, saw it all — and he said he also regrets it all.
To read more of Part Two, you can click this link.
PART THREE
How does one process the feelings of betrayal by a religious leader — especially when that religious leader is also family?
That's something that Michael Shamblin — son of the late Gwen Shamblin, the controversial religious figure from Brentwood — is still trying to figure out.
"People wonder, how do people buy into cults or how do they buy into these churches or charismatic leaders? It was my mother, and I went along with everything," Shamblin said in an exclusive interview with NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Read more on this portion at this link.
PART FOUR
A threat delivered with a sniper's bullet.
That's just one of the startling claims from the son of controversial Brentwood religious figure Gwen Shamblin in an exclusive interview with NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Michael Shamblin said the threat was delivered by Shamblin's new husband, former "Tarzan" actor Joe Lara, sometime after their 2018 marriage. Lara, who was proficient with a sniper's rifle, reportedly took Michael out behind the plantation-style home that Shamblin owned in the affluent Brentwood community.
PART FIVE
"I'm going to say this, and the people of Remnant are not going to like this."
That was how Michael Shamblin began his thought. The son of Remnant Fellowship founder Gwen Shamblin, Michael is the highest-level defector to ever leave and blow the whistle on the controversial Brentwood church.
Michael Shamblin, who was once listed among Remnant's leaders, now calls it "a cult."
"If the Remnant members sitting in that building realized how much information that these people have on them, there would be no one left in those seats," he told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Read more on this portion at this link.
Watch 2021 story about Gwen Shamblin's history
Watch 2021 story about Gwen Shamblin's deposition testimony
Watch 2004 story about child abuse death of a Remnant boy