Bethany Joy Lenz says ‘One Tree Hill’ costars tried to ‘rescue’ her from cult: ‘I was very stubborn’
“One Tree Hill” star Bethany Joy Lenz has recalled the time her co-stars tried to “rescue” her from the cult she was a part of for a decade of her life.
In an interview with Variety, Lenz said things got so serious that her famous pals, whom she chose not to name, made a desperate attempt to intervene.
“It was the whisper behind the scenes, like, ‘You know, she’s in a cult,'” she told the outlet. “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,” she added. “I was really committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make.”
Lenz, who played Haley James Scott on “One Tree Hill,” said her involvement in the cult soon led to “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,” she shared.
“It built a deep wedge of distrust between me and my cast and crew. 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.”
The actress credited the hit show, and its filming location, for “saving [her] life.”
“I was there nine months out of the year in North Carolina,” she explained. “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.”
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Speaking on her “Drama Queens” podcast last month, the Everly frontwoman shared that she hopes to write a tell-all book about her time in a cult to help others.
Lenz, who said she already has some pieces written, added that “her ADHD has made it really difficult over the years” to complete her book.
However, she explained that she is “really commit to putting it all together, I would love to write about my experience.”
“Also, I don’t know how much I can say because there are still people and legal things in place that make it more complicated for the timing of that,” she admitted.
