Actress and singer-songwriter Bethany Joy Lenz shocked fans last month when she revealed on her Drama Queens podcast that she spent 10 years in a cult. Now, the Hallmark star is opening up about the painful experience in an upcoming memoir, due in early 2024. "I was at the height of my career," Lenz told Variety of her time in the yet-unnamed cult, which overlapped with her starring role on One Tree Hill. "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."
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Lenz revealed that, over the course of One Tree Hill's nine-season run from 2003-2012, she "squandered" career opportunities and precious bonding time with her co-stars due to her commitment to the cult. While the 42-year-old is not naming the cult, she's said that it started as a home Bible study group in Los Angeles. Having grown up in a Christian home, Lenz says the group felt like just another Wednesday night faith meeting — until a "sociopathic" new leader was brought on to run things.
The actress compared the unnamed leader to NXIVM's Keith Raniere, whose abusive leadership in the sex cult was exposed in the 2020 HBO docuseries The Vow.
"Even though it's painful and there's a lot of drama, there's a lot of control, there's so much that makes you feel depressed and lonely and all these horrible things that come with being in a deeply controlled environment like that, you don't have anybody else," Lenz explained. "You're so isolated. You're so afraid to leave. If I leave that, what will I have? And then throw God into the mix. If I leave that, will God still love me?"
Lenz's One Tree Hill co-stars repeatedly tried to "rescue" her, she says. But her isolation "built a deep wedge of distrust" between her and her fellow actors. "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. So you feel incredibly lonely." Today, Lenz and her former co-stars Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton share a podcast called Drama Queens, where they've alleged that they experienced bullying and sexual harassment on the set of One Tree Hill.
Still, the actress credits One Tree Hill with ultimately being her saving grace. Many other group members lived within the cult full-time, which was not possible for Lenz, who filmed the hit series in North Carolina for nine months of every year.
"One Tree Hill saved my life," she says, adding: "I think that spatial separation made a big difference when it was time for me to wake up."
Lenz also credits motherhood with giving her the courage to ultimately break away from the group. She says she felt most fearful after she left. "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. I think this is why so many people stay in abusive situations."
Lenz hopes that by including her story in her autobiography, others might also be inspired to leave abusive groups and relationships.
"Why I wanted to talk about it is because I think it can be really healing for a lot of other people," she told the outlet. "I know I'm not the only one. What good are our painful experiences if we just lock them away and pretend like everything's perfect? That's not doing anybody any good."
