Bethany Joy Lenz says 'One Tree Hill' costars tried to save her from 'secret life' in cult
"One Tree Hill" star Bethany Joy Lenz has shared more details about the 10 years she spent in a "Bible-based cult" — and the 10 years it took to recover from the experience.
She was involved with the alleged cult for "the entirety of my time on 'One Tree Hill,'" Lenz, 42, revealed in an interview with Variety that published this week.
"I mean, it was like a secret life. I’m on this TV show. I’m living this glamorous, celebrity life — as people see it — and I have a total secret life going on," she told the outlet. "It was so painful."
Lenz is perhaps best known for portraying Haley James Scott for nine seasons on the popular coming-of-age drama, which aired from 2003-2012. She went on to star in a slate of Hallmark movies in recent years and is getting back into making music.
Lenz previously offered a few details about the cult in an episode of her podcast "Drama Queens", which she hosts with her "One Tree Hill" co-stars Hilarie Burton Morgan and Sophia Bush, last month. In the Variety interview, however, the actress and singer delved deeper into the cult's impact when she was in her 20s, how it affected her acting career and how she has moved on.
Bethany Joy Lenz compares Bible study cult to NXIVM
Lenz "grew up in a Christian home where Wednesday night Bible studies were very common" and was seeking out one she could join after moving states, she told Variety.
She found a Wednesday night Bible study in Los Angeles — "and that's all it was to me," she said.
"But the friendships seemed deeper, more vulnerable somehow, as time went on. The person that was brought into the leadership position was sociopathic and most of us who were involved were in our early 20s," Lenz explained, comparing this "guy I that I was dealing with" to NXIVM founder Keith Raniere.
In 2020, Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison for his role in leading the criminal enterprise, which included a cult-like sorority where women were sexually exploited and branded with his initials. Lenz said she saw "so many similarities" when she watched "The Vow," the Max docuseries about NXIVM.
"When I watched 'The Vow,' that’s the best comparison I can make, in terms of the functionality of the leadership in that group," Lenz said. "I was very committed to my faith and just got some really bad advice. I was really committed to being the best version of me that I can be within the context of what I knew."
Calling what she experienced "spiritual abuse," Lenz explained why she stayed with the group.
"I was just afraid of God. I was afraid of having my own relationship with God, so it was like, 'Oh, I’ll join these people. They’ll just tell me what to do, and then I won’t actually have to do it myself. I can just follow up everybody else’s rules,'" she said. "It’s a total cop out."
Lenz says 'One Tree Hill' 'saved my life' from a cult
Lenz's participation in the alleged cult, which spanned her entire "One Tree Hill" career and ended "very shortly after" the show went off-air in 2012, was not a secret to her fellow cast members. Her costars even tried to help her, she revealed.
"It was open with them — it was the whisper behind the scenes, like, 'You know, she’s in a cult,'" Lenz told Variety. "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 added, "But I was very stubborn. I was really committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make." When her costars discussed the behind-the-scenes of the show on their podcast, Lenz realized that she kept saying “Wish I had been there.”
Being involved with the alleged cult also hurt her career, according to Lenz.
"I squandered so many opportunities because I prioritized this group. I was at the height of my career, getting offers for huge movies and Broadway shows," she said. "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."
What ultimately helped was having distance from the LA-based group, Lenz said. "One Tree Hill" primarily filmed in and around Wilmington, North Carolina.
"So in a lot of ways, 'One Tree Hill' saved my life, because I was there nine months out of the year in North Carolina. 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."
What life is like after leaving a cult
Leaving the group wasn't scary, Lenz said; it was the repercussions of her departure that made her fearful.
"It was after I left — that was the most scared I got. Afraid of my child being taken away, afraid of being slandered and ridiculed, afraid of never working again, afraid of being misunderstood, shamed… the aftermath of admitting I was so wrong about something I’d committed my whole life to was absolutely crushing," she said.
Lenz added, "I think this is why so many people stay in abusive situations. Leaving itself isn’t actually that hard (or, wasn’t for me). It’s the admission that we were so colossally mistaken. 'How can I ever trust myself again to make any decisions about anything?' That fear is paralyzing in a way that takes many years to recover from."
Doing "a lot of inner work" and therapy has led her to where she is now; Lenz said she is in the process of writing a memoir that will publish in early 2024, according to People.
"There’s so much more that could help people, so much about this weird, secret life," she told Variety. "I’m going to put it all out there and yeah, I’ll share some of the all the dirty details — as much as I can without causing harm."
"It is a miracle in and of itself, the fact that I even still believe in God after getting out of something like that, but there has been a lot of work done, and I think there will continue to be a lot of work for me to do," Lenz said.
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