Who Was Gwen Shamblin From HBO’s “The Way Down”? Gwen Shamblin is an American author and Diet Guru born on February 18, 1955. Besides being an author, she laid the foundation of The Weigh Down Workshop, a diet program, and the Remnant Fellowship Church. During her life, Gwen got into several controversies regarding her work and the church.
Gwen married David Shamblin in 1978 and had two kids – Michael Shamblin and Elizabeth Shamblin. The couple filed for a divorce in 2018 after staying together for 40 years. After the divorce, Gwen married William Joseph Lara (Joe Lara) and became Gwen Shamblin Lara. Joe was an American actor and mostly appeared in action-adventure movies like Tarzan: The Epic Adventures, Doomsdayer, Conan The Adventurer, and more.
Gwen’s story came into popularity after the release of HBO Max’s “The Way Down.” The short series contained five episodes and began on September 30, 2021, and ended on April 28, 2022, with partial releases. The director Marina Zenovich tried to talk to Gwen and the Church for better production and true stories, but they denied it.
Gwen died at the age of 66 on May 29, 2021. The plane she was traveling on, the Cessna C501, crashed into Percy Priest Lake in Smyrna, Tennessee. She and her second husband, Joe Lara, were among the seven victims who died during the incident. Let’s see more about Gwen, her works, and her controversial foundations.
Gwen Shamblin Early Life And Work
Gwen pursued her undergraduate in dietetics (study related to proper diet and diseases related to improper diet) and her masters in food and nutrition with a major in biochemistry. Gwen faced the problem of obesity in her college days and invested her time and effort to find a solution. It was this effort that laid the foundation of The Weigh Down Workshop.
Gwen wrote multiple books, but the most popular one was The Weigh Down Diet ( 1997), in which she mentioned how one could control eating based on spirituality. After this, she wrote Rise Above (2000) and Exodus Devotional (2002), both related to spirituality. From her works, we see she was less of an author and more of a spirituality-based dietician.
Gwen was a popular figure in the U.S. and West. Her popularity helped her to appear in several magazines, newspapers, and TV shows. She used these sources to spread information about her program. The sources were BBC, Family Circle, People Magazine, Dateline, Larry King Live, and The Insider.
Primarily conducted in churches, Gwen’s program gained momentum during the mid-1990s. And in 1994, it spread to churches over several countries. The program extended its services to approximately 5000 churches in 1996. By August 1998, the program had 250K followers, and Gwen laid the foundation of the Remnant Fellowship Church in 1999 in Franklin, Tennessee.
Such expansion over a short time gained attention leading television station WTVF to investigate the owners. The HBO Max series accused the Remanant Church of abuse towards a child. The church was the most controversial part of her career, and she willed all her property to her kids and first husband and nothing to the church. Was she so dedicated to the welfare of people through spirituality?
Gwen Shamblin’s Net Worth
Her entire program generated an estimated $20 million in revenue per year. And Gwen’s net worth was estimated to be $100 million. Gwen has had a shady life – accused of promoting child abuse, and she lied about her will. She said that her income was for the church’s good causes and the remaining for the Government, but it went to her family.
Many people out there might still believe in her teachings, though I haven’t personally read them. From what I know, it’s shady too. Gwen believed in the teachings of the church but got married twice, and her followers criticized her for it. The last post on her Instagram account was on June 3, 2021, six days after her death.
I don’t trust people who expand on the name of God, then lie and live shadily. Hence I believe the title of the HBO Max series, “The Way Down God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.”
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