Bethany Joy Lenz (Bring It On Again, Just My Type) is an actor best known for her role as Haley James Scott in One Tree Hill. In addition to her acting career, Lenz is currently writing memoir. In this memoir, according to Variety, Lenz will be detailing her experience in a religious cult.
In an interview with Variety, Lenz spoke about why she wishes to write about her experience. She stated, “Why I wanted to talk about it is because I think it can be really healing for a lot of other people. 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.”
She told Variety that the cult was first disguised as weekly Bible study sessions. However, as time progressed, the Bible study sessions became more intense. She explained, “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 compared this leader to the cult leader Keith Raniere, who is the subject of the HBO documentary series The Vow.
Lenz notes that she was a part of this cult when she was playing Haley James Scott in One Tree Hill. She explained to Variety that, although her fellow cast members attempted to rescue her, it was difficult to fully open up. She stated, “I was really committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make.”
She continued, “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.”
Luckily, Lenz was able to distance herself from the cult. She explained to Variety how her time filming One Tree Hill in North Carolina helped her. She stated, “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. And I think that spatial separation made a big difference when it was time for me to wake up.”
In her interview with Variety, Lenz also spoke about the aftermath when she left the cult after One Tree Hill ended in 2012. For her, one of the most difficult parts of the healing process was learning how to trust others again.
She hopes that her memoir, which is scheduled to be released next year, will help other individuals with similar experiences.