Actress Bethany Joy Lenz revealed she was in a “Bible-based cult” the entire time she starred in “One Tree Hill,” and she credited her castmates with helping her get out of the situation.
Lenz said she was in the cult the entire time the show aired from 2003-2012, according to a recent interview with Variety. She noted she was “very committed” to her faith and was easily roped into a weekly Bible study that quickly took a dark turn. The more she talked about her Bible group with her castmates, the more concerned they became. Eventually they stepped in and assisted her in untangling herself from the cult.
“For a while, they were all trying to save me and rescue me, which is lovely and so amazing to be cared about in that way,” she said.
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The famous actress admitted she never felt “consciously scared” within the cult, but she did experience “a few physical interactions” that made her uneasy. It was those moments that helped her “recognize a bit of what was happening” and prompted her to begin seeking a safe exit from the group.
Lenz noted that the process of leaving wasn’t a simple one. In spite of the efforts of her fellow actors, she admitted she “was very stubborn” and “committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make” within the group.
The famous actress said part of the cult’s influence involved them placing what she called “a deep wedge of distrust” between her and the rest of the cast of “One Tree Hill.”
“As much as I loved them and cared about them, there was a fundamental thought: If I’m in pain, if I’m suffering, I can’t go to any of these people,” she told Variety. “So you feel incredibly lonely.”
Lenz noted that the influence of the cult led to her turning down a number of career opportunities.
“Everything I’d trained for, all my childhood dreams were coming true and I said no to all of it so I could go live with this remote, small group of people, convinced I was making a noble, spiritual sacrifice,” she said.
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Ultimately, spending nine months out of every year in North Carolina for the sake of filming “One Tree Hill,” provided some healthy distance from the cult, she said. (RELATED: Police Arrest Former-Actor-Turned-Cult-Leader, Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse)
“I had a lot of flying back and forth, a lot of people visiting and things like that, but my life was really built in North Carolina,” she said. “And I think that spatial separation made a big difference when it was time for me to wake up.”
Lenz is writing a book about her experience and promises to reveal the name of the cult within its pages.
“What good are our painful experiences if we just lock them away and pretend like everything’s perfect?” she asked. “That’s not doing anybody any good.”
“I just want to squeeze every ounce of help out of this experience. I want this experience to just be the fucking biggest lemon I ever had. Let me fucking squeeze out all the juice for everybody else — we’re gonna make some lemonade,” Lenz told Variety.