Summary
- Bethany Joy Lenz will reveal her experiences in a cult, detailing significant moments in her upcoming memoir, after spending ten years in recovery.
- Lenz suffered from “spiritual abuse” and underwent nearly a decade of therapy to address the residual trauma.
- While appearing on One Tree Hill, Lenz’s castmates tried to rescue her from the cult, but she was committed to her beliefs and felt isolated due to the group’s manipulative tactics.
One Tree Hill‘s Bethany Joy Lenz will share details about her time in a cult for an upcoming memoir. Last month, Lenz revealed that she had been a part of an unnamed cult for ten years on the Drama Queens podcast, which she co-hosts with fellow One Tree Hill alumni Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton. At the time, the actress and singer shared that she felt writing about her experience “would be really valuable” noting that she spent ten years in recovery. In a new interview with PEOPLE, Lenz shares that her upcoming book, scheduled for release next year, will detail significant moments in her life.
“I’m a writer at heart, so turning a phrase is easy for me. Exploring the memories, and really facing them, can be challenging — but I’m doing it,” she says.
While Lenz hasn’t shared much about her experience in the cult publicly, she says that she suffered from “spiritual abuse” and has gone through nearly a decade of therapy to deal with the residual trauma:
“Recovery looks different for everyone, depending on your experience of trauma. I had to start from a baseline of my personal understanding of God and the experiences I had had. And then there was a lot of going back to who I was before and remembering that, and then acknowledging that there was so much I just didn’t know,” she says.
Related: One Tree Hill: Best Projects from the Cast Since Leaving the Show
One Tree Hill Cast Mates Tried to “Rescue” Bethany Joy Lenz
The CW
Lenz, who portrayed Haley James Scott on One Tree Hill from 2003 to 2012, says her time in the cult overlapped with her appearance on the show. In an interview with Variety, Lenz shared that her cast mates were aware of her involvement with the “bible-based” 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. But I was very stubborn. I was really committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make. … The nature of a group like that is isolation; they have to make you distrust everyone around you so that the only people you trust are, first and foremost, the leadership and then, people within the group if the leadership approves of them, and isn’t in the middle of pitting you against each other, which happens all the time also,” Lenz said.
According to Lenz, she remained in the cult until “shortly after” One Tree Hill’s 2012 conclusion.
Following her starring role in One Tree Hill, Lenz appeared in multiple episodes of Dexter’s final season. She later appeared on episodes of series including Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, American Gothic, and Grey’s Anatomy.
Although reluctant at first, she joined Burton and Bush for Drama Queens in 2021. The re-watch podcast features insider information from the three. Earlier this year, Burton, who starred as Peyton Sawyer for six seasons, detailed an incident of sexual harassment at the hands of a One Tree Hill “boss.” In 2017, several of the show’s crew and cast accused showrunner Mark Schwahn of sexual harassment. Ultimately, Lenz believes that the podcast has helped the trio in healing from the negative situations that occurred during their time on the series.
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