Bethany Joy Lenz fled cult for Hollywood: ‘Many weeping on the floor nights’

For a decade, actress Bethany Joy Lenz was in a “bubble,” confined to the beliefs of the cult she had unknowingly joined while starring in the popular television drama “One Tree Hill.” 

“I decided what I wanted to believe and rather than being willing to look at the belief system and measure it, I adjusted everything around me to fit,” she revealed in a new interview with People magazine. 

“They were my only friends, I was married into this group, I had built my entire life around it, I had given up so much of my career because of it. The stakes were really high if I admitted I was wrong.”

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Lenz, who’s telling the shocking story in her upcoming book, “Dinner for Vampires,” only began talking about her time in the cult last year. From an early age, the actress, now 43, said she craved a community.

“I [had] always been looking for a place to belong,” she explained. She noted she was raised by a young mother and father, and said, “Of all the wonderful things they did as parents, this was a gap in [their] parenting, like we all have as parents. And it just so happened that my gap intersected with my experience growing up in the Evangelical Church. And so I was looking for a place to belong that was also attached to a higher, spiritual experience.”

Bethany Joy Lenz says that when she first joined the group, “it looked so normal.” (Robby Klein/Getty Images for American Heart Association)

“It looked so normal,” Lenz said of her initial interactions with the group, attending weekly Bible studies. “And it was at first, and then it just morphed, but by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to really notice. And I was very young.”

Simultaneously, she starred as Haley James Scott in “One Tree Hill,” which was filmed in North Carolina.

Lenz ultimately met a pastor, whom she identifies as “Les,” who convinced her to move to Idaho and live in a commune-like community called the “Big House.” She claims the pastor not only controlled her life, but her finances as well. “I don’t know if I like the term brainwashing,” Lenz said of the experience. “I think it’s more… high control.”

Bethany Joy Lenz moved to Idaho and lived in a commune-like community. (Robby Klein/Getty Images for American Heart Association)

“For 10 years, I lived in this bubble of ‘Unless you believe in the same God that I believe in, unless you believe in having relationships the same way that I believe [in], unless you do all the things on the same checklist that I’m doing, I can’t learn from you. You can’t teach me anything’… What a terrible mistake.”

“It looked so normal. And it was at first, and then it just morphed, but by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to really notice. And I was very young.”

— Bethany Joy Lenz

Lenz eventually found the strength to leave the group, shortly after her daughter’s birth in 2011, fleeing to Hollywood where she’d initially started. 

“To leave a TV show after nine seasons, to leave all my friends that I had known for the last 10 years, to leave my marriage, to leave the state, all at the same time, and just me and my baby in Hollywood like, ‘Hire me. Anyone?’ Not knowing how I was gonna make rent, ’cause all the money was gone, it was legitimately, incredibly difficult,” Lenz told People.

Bethany Joy Lenz, pictured with her “One Tree Hill” co-stars, played Haley James Scott on the show for nine seasons. (Carley Margolis/FilmMagic/Getty Images)

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“I had many, many weeping on the floor nights, just trying to figure out how to manage and what I was going to do. And what to do with my emotions: the anger, the injustice.”

Lenz’s memoir is set to be released in October. (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

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Lenz said she’s still recovering from her time in the cult.

“There’s no quick way through. But I don’t know that that’s the point. I don’t think that’s the point after experiencing trauma or suffering is to just [be] like, ‘OK, how do I get over this?’”

“I’m still healing. It’s just day by day. Person by person. Interaction by interaction. Making the choice to trust someone that you’re not sure if you can trust, finding out you were right, shouldn’t have trusted them. Finding out you were wrong, and that little thing that you were like, ‘I don’t know if I can trust,’ maybe was just fear because of everything that’s happened.”

“I had many, many weeping on the floor nights, just trying to figure out how to manage and what I was going to do. And what to do with my emotions: the anger, the injustice.”

— Bethany Joy Lenz

Bethany Joy Lenz says she isn’t writing a book to “get revenge” on anyone. (Emily Assiran/Getty Images for That’s 4 Entertainment)

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Lenz made it clear she doesn’t have any nefarious motives in telling her story. “I didn’t write this book to get revenge on anyone. I just wanted to tell an honest truth about what happened.”

“The further away I get from it, the more a blessing I see in it,” she told the outlet. “The more good things that I see have come out of walking through that,” citing her daughter first. Lenz also believes she’s going to help people “who have experienced this and don’t know what to do with their shame. Who may be currently experiencing it and don’t quite know how to identify what they’re feeling, but maybe they can recognize and see something in what I’m saying,” she added. “And help people who might otherwise get into something like this, and now they know what red flags to look for.”

“How did this happen? I don’t know, but here I am, and I’m grateful. I feel at peace.”