Bethany Joy Lenz Spent 10 Years in a Cult, and Now She’s Telling Her Story: “I’ve Got a Powerful Cautionary Tale”

More than 21 years ago, Bethany Joy Lenz was embarking on a new chapter of her life that would change everything. 

In 2003, Lenz was starring on soon-to-be-hit television series One Tree Hill as Haley James Scott. A golden student, Haley was the best friend of Chad Michael Murray’s Lucas Scott and the other half to James Lafferty’s Nathan, the two becoming a memorable TV couple. Starring on a popular teen show was life-changing, but Lenz’s experience was also affected by the fact that she was simultaneously in a cult.

Throughout the show’s tenure, Lenz seemingly lived a double life. The actress would spend days on set in North Carolina alongside Murray, Lafferty, Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan. But when not working, she devoted herself to a small Christian group, eventually known as the Big House Family, led by a shady pastor in Idaho. What began as something she joined for Bible studies became a dominating entity in her life, in which her career, life choices and bank account would be controlled.  

Shortly after One Tree Hill ended in 2012, Lenz walked away from the cult. Now she’s sharing the full story in her memoir, Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!), published Tuesday.

“I think I’ve got a powerful cautionary tale. I think it’s relatable, and I think I can help so many more people telling this story than I can by acting,” Lenz told The Hollywood Reporter.

Though the memoir includes some One Tree Hill anecdotes, like her audition with Murray, first meeting with Lafferty and admiration for Bush and Morgan, fans shouldn’t expect a tell-all on the teen show. Instead, Lenz describes her journey from being a young 20-something looking for herself and a sense of belonging, to losing herself and finding herself again.

“Through a character, I was able to live this vicarious other life of someone that was more free and vulnerable and trusting and curious and all of these things that I wasn’t allowing myself to experience in reality. It was like God gave me this outlet to remind me of who I really am,” Lenz said. 

More recently, Lenz revisited her OTH past via the rewatch podcast Drama Queens, which she co-hosts with former castmates Burton Morgan, Bush and now Robert Buckley. Through the show, Lenz is not only able to share behind the scenes anecdotes and commentary on the episodes but also begin viewing her younger self with more compassion: “It has been very healing in me, learning to love young Joy, forgive her and have grace for her.”   

Ahead of her memoir’s release, Lenz spoke with THR about writing Dinner for Vampires, revisiting One Tree Hill and the growing lessons she’s learned along the way.

I would be remiss to not start by asking about the recent news that there are talks for a One Tree Hill sequel series. Given you co-host the Drama Queens rewatch podcast with Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan, did they ever bring this up with you privately or have you spoken about this since with any updates that you’re willing to share?

I wish I could give you a different answer than I’ve had to give everybody else, but it’s true. It’s just too early on to be able to tell. There are so many factors that go into getting a show made and who participates in it that even if I had something to say, there would be nothing that would be all encompassing enough to fully explain how this process works. There are way too many variables involved. So, all I can say is that I love Tree Hill. It will always be my home, and my door is open and my ears are open.

Speaking of the rewatch podcast, it was there where you first publicly revealed you were in a cult. I imagine talking about your past publicly is one thing, but it’s another to write about the experience in a book. What was the moment you decided you were ready to tell your story and how you wanted to tell it? 

I don’t know that the moment ever arrived that I wanted to tell my story. I think the moment arrived where I felt it’s better to tell it than not to tell it, [as] it’s more useful. What I went through is more useful to other people in the world being told and being exposed than it is for me to keep my pride and my secret in a drawer. I think we all live with lots of different regrets and mistakes, and we don’t all want to talk about them, especially as an actor. 

I’m an introvert. I’m a private person. I want to be able to slip into a character. I want people to not know too much about my personal life, so that they can be told a story, and, believe it, and not be distracted by anything that they know about me as a person. So reconciling that may be something that is now out of my control, and I don’t know how that’s going to affect my career, was a really tough pill to swallow. That was a really hard hurdle to overcome as I entered into discussions about creating this book and really being willing to tell my story.

Another reason why I kept it quiet for so long [is] because I didn’t want to walk into casting rooms and have the casting director be like, “Oh, this is the girl that was in a cult.” How do you get past that as an audience member, as a director? I think I’ve got a powerful cautionary tale. I think it’s relatable, and I think I can help so many more people telling this story than I can by acting. That’s why I decided to say yes. The impetus was in the moment that I kind of randomly offhandedly mentioned it on Drama Queens [podcast]. I did not know it was going to blow up the way that it did, mainly because I had mentioned it a few times prior to that, [and] nobody said anything. So I just didn’t think much of it. 

But I had started writing as a catharsis in journals. I had written songs, [a] short film version. I sort of started to put this out on paper for a book one day over the last 10 years, and it was something that had become more for me an outlet. So, when the opportunity came up, I just started going back through all those files and went, “Okay, well, let’s put this together.”

What has been the reaction thus far after that reveal both personally and professionally?

I don’t know that there’s been much reaction professionally, or maybe there has been, and I just don’t know it because everybody talks about things behind closed doors. To my face, everybody’s really nice, which is not a surprise, in this day and age. (Laughs.) I don’t know what the honest reaction is, except for the people who I’ve seen have read the memoir ahead of time and I’ve seen some of those reviews, and some people who don’t have any connection to me and can give an honest reflection on the book. It seems mostly positive and appreciative. I’m really hoping that that trend continues because I want to keep writing books.

Writing more stories about yourself or fiction stories?

Oh, God, no! I’m so tired of talking about myself. No, I want to write fiction. I’ve always wanted to write fiction. I’ve been writing fiction since I was a kid and actually when I was 12 years old, I started writing about a girl in high school named Luke. The irony that I ended up on a show about a boy in high school named Luke, it’s kind of funny! I think I have a little bit more to say, not necessarily in the prescriptive space, but in the more life reflections space. I’m a deep thinker. I’m an armchair philosopher and theologian, so I would love to be able to have a space to explore a lot of my thoughts on those things. But it’s mostly just to open up dialogue. I would also love to just be an old lady in a cabin that sometimes goes and acts and writes books.

You write that when people have asked which cult you were in, they almost seem disappointed, and you have felt like you have had to prove the cult’s legitimacy. What do you think that says about how the general public understands cults, the ways they work, and who is susceptible to them? And how did you maybe want to address that in any way with your memoir?

Great question! That’s how I felt at first. I don’t feel that way necessarily anymore, but it was when I got out the first three, four years. I did notice people light up like, “Oh, tell me something salacious. This is exciting.” And I was like, “It’s really not that salacious.” Now that I’ve written it all out, and I can see in chronological format all the horrible things that happened, there are definitely pieces in there that are pretty shocking. Looking back, if I compare it to Jim Jones or Heaven’s Gate or The Children of God and all these things that are really, really extreme, I go, “Oh no, mine’s kind of benign. It was just a group of people that got caught up in something with this leader that was a pastor, [and] turned out to be really controlling.”

But when you start to break it down, how far could it have gone if we stayed? Did all those other groups start out that way, too? I think so. I think they all started out with pretty smart people who just cared about the world and cared about making a difference. Somebody was offering a set of answers to life’s big questions, which is what religion is. Cults are doing the exact same thing, just maybe on a smaller scale in terms of the population of people involved generally. The word cult is totally undefinable. It’s a word that we use in our culture as extreme. But then again, what is extreme? The stigma is harmful because it categorizes people as dumb or weak. It’s multi-layered. 

I really want people to read this book and recognize that labels are really harmful. We’re all convincing ourselves of things all day long, all the time. I’s really important to know and reason and critically think about what you believe, what stories you’re telling yourself and follow the trail all the way down. Because truth has to exist, otherwise we’re all just wandering around convincing ourselves of any random thing and that’s not functional for society.

You were in this cult for the entirety of OTH’s nine seasons and write about how it impacted your relationships with your fellow cast and crew. How has your relationship with people who were on the show changed, if at all, after revealing what was happening to you?

Well, it got better. You can sense when you go out into the world and when you’re talking with someone else who is open and trusting of you, interested in you and curious about you, and doesn’t have a sense of superiority around you that you’re probably drawn to them. I know I am. When I was involved in that group, I was. I did have a sense of superiority because I thought I had all the right answers. I didn’t trust anyone else outside of the group, because I was afraid that if I got curious, listened and empathized with somebody else that was outside, maybe I would get swayed or convinced into something that was not what I believed in. 

I was really guarded because I was trying to protect the fragile structure of my belief system that I refused to examine, and that created this wall around me that people just could not penetrate. And at some point you just kind of give up, right? You’re like, “I’m not going to keep trying with this person that clearly is not curious and doesn’t trust me and doesn’t want to engage with me.” So when I got out of the group and started being more open like, “Hey, I was in a cult. I’m sorry.” You know, some people were really like, “Let’s talk about it.” Some people were like, “We know it’s okay. I love you. You’re a great person, and I’m sorry you had to go through that.” 

And there were still people in my life, not anyone really on the show, but that are still like, “Yeah, but you’re weird for getting sucked into that so I don’t want to interact with you.” That’s their reality, and that’s their space to believe that. So, it just created much more of an openness, flow of energy, curiosity and trust with them, with the people that I missed out on for 10 years. So now I get all that time back in a way, which is great.

During that time, you’re also in your 20s, a time when you’re already trying to find yourself. And despite being able to distance yourself from the group while filming in North Carolina, you’re doing so with this sense that big brother is watching. Were you able to fully be yourself on set and give people an opportunity to really know you, or did you always feel like you were just in this tug of war of being who you wanted to be versus who you thought you should be?

Another great question. I did feel the tug of war on a constant basis. There was always a threshold. There was always a ceiling. I’d be real and dropped in and connected, I didn’t become a robot. I was the real person, and I’m still me, but I had become a much more tense, terrified, guarded version of myself. Being able to have consistent access to the part of myself that is free — like in a scene, I am not anyone else. I am that character, and through a character, I was able to live this vicarious other life of someone that was more free and vulnerable and trusting and curious and all of these things that I wasn’t allowing myself to experience in reality. It was like God gave me this outlet to remind me of who I really am, even though it’s through a character. 

I think that did really help a lot, and being able to have access to that, because when I left the group, I knew I still was really in touch with that other part of myself. I hadn’t just hidden it away completely. One of the reasons why it was extra hard later in the series was because I felt so much of that tug of war, and I was so unhappy in my whole life and situation. They sent a minder to live with me, and so even though my husband was living back in Idaho, someone from the group was living with me as my roommate on set. You say there’s always this feeling like they’re the big brothers in the background, but during a few years, there was quite literally someone who was there watching me making sure because I was becoming more independent. 

I was becoming fed up with the depression and the exhaustion of living life the way I had been and they sensed it. I think the leader specifically sent this person out to watch me and keep reminding me that I belong back in Idaho. I didn’t write about that in the book. There were so many things I didn’t write about in the book because there just wasn’t enough time. There’s only so much a reader can take and care. How much shit am I gonna load them up with? (Laughs.)

When Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton Morgan left OTH, you were also going to walk away because you were asked to by the cult. At that time did you personally feel like it was truly time to move on from portraying Haley?

Yes, I did want to. I wanted to leave at that point because I thought that all of my unhappiness was due to the fact that I was under contract and forced to live in North Carolina and be on this TV show that I signed a contract to be on. If I could just get rid of the show and live full time in Idaho and surround myself and immerse myself completely with the family, then I might come to a place of overcoming all of my depression, overcoming all of my selfishness and bad childhood triggers and all of these things, and  become a more whole, healthy human being. It’s every gambler addict in every casino that just keeps doubling down. The stakes are too high. What are you going to do?

The foundation of this cult was centered on the idea of being a family. At the time you left the cult, your time with your OTH family had also already ended. How did that period affect your understanding of family, and what you valued in your relationships?

It took years for me to grapple with what family means. There are so many people out there with really toxic people in their families that are abusive, and it’s detrimental to be in a relationship with them. There’s a huge epidemic socially in our culture right now of people labeling people that they disagree with as toxic and cutting them out of their life, which is exactly what you do when you’re in a cult. So, I can’t say your family is just your chosen people without it sounding like cultural buzzwords that every church, every political party, a life coach, everybody’s just using as a way to avoid hard relationships and not just surround themselves with people who agree with them. That doesn’t work either.

I can tell you that I do believe there is something valuable about your blood family, that we are brought into this world for a reason with the people that we’re brought in with and I don’t think it’s fair to say, “Oh, that’s just biology.” I’ve invested a lot more in my actual natural family since the day I left [the cult] than I know I ever had and it’s really meaningful to me. I haven’t encountered anyone in my family yet that is so toxic that I have to remove them from my life. There are hard relationships. There are people that find me abrasive, or that I find to be annoying or whatever (laughs), but we still find common ground because we are family, because we are blood family, and we’re gonna see each other and we were never gonna not be related. So as hard as you can fight for those relationships, I would say it’s worth it. 

In the book, you compare how set conditions were similar to what you were experiencing at the hands of a cult leader. Some of the other castmembers on the series have accused Mark Schwahn of creating a toxic set and sexual harassment. When was the moment you realized you were experiencing similar deeply controlled environments?

Years later, but I had so much to untangle from the life trauma I was living in my real life that it wasn’t until I got out afterwards. Even talking with the other girls and hearing their stories, I was like, “Oh, that’s what was going on.” It wasn’t just me who was being weird and everybody else was cool. I definitely was being weird and had some of my own shit going on. Clearly, I just wrote a book about it. But everybody else, a lot of the other women, particularly, and even the guys, were affected by that, too. There was a lot of triangulation happening everywhere, so it created an environment where nobody really trusted each other because we were all hearing things about each other that weren’t true, or maybe were true, but in a different context made more sense, or were partially true. At some point you just kind of go, I’m tired of navigating through all this. I’ll just avoid everybody so I don’t have to deal with it. I think a lot of us did that.

Given this all happened throughout the show and after it ended, how would you say it affected your ability to not only say goodbye to the show but appreciate the series’ success and your accomplishments on it?

Saying goodbye was easy because I was shedding so much at that time. I was just feeling it and had just become a mother. I was becoming more empowered and more independent. I was so sad to say goodbye. Of course, it’s hard to end any longstanding relationship, which is what I had with everyone on that show, regardless of how imperfect. But saying goodbye and leaving the show felt like it was definitely the right time, and so it wasn’t necessarily painful. Then [when] leaving that, I was leaving my marriage and leaving this group at the same time, too. 

It was years later in realizing, as I untangled all the trauma and this spaghetti bowl of events in my life and emotions and spiritual confusion, what I missed out on. That’s what made me start to yearn for that community again and has made me so grateful for all the [OTH] conventions that we do, this podcast and all the opportunities that we have to connect with each other again and with the fans. I also feel like I sort of checked out and not participated in that whole part of the show when I was younger, [so] to be able to still have the opportunity to do that now, it’s a redemption story all around. It’s really great.

You write that being a part of the Big House Family offered things you wanted out of life, including a sense of belonging, love and feeling like you didn’t have to prove your value. How were you able to find for yourself what you had been turning to the cult for?

I spent a lot of time when I left exploring different religions, researching the history of different spiritual texts, listening to experts in all kinds of realms, quantum physics and various religions and atheism even. Just really exploring different versions of these answers. What I found to be the most satisfying, cerebrally and soulfully satisfying answers were in the Christ story. 

The more that I researched, the more things that made sense to me as an answer for all these big questions that should produce the most compassion, the most help for the poor, the most humility and all of these things that, unfortunately, we don’t see much of in the western church at all. But the way that I understood that and went back to a relationship with Jesus from that place that wasn’t tied in with the church and the checklist, and me trying to earn my value and all of that, the more authentic my faith became [and] my relationship with God became. I feel like now I can live from a place of making mistakes and learning how to live from a place of making mistakes and being okay with it, and that those pieces get filled. 

You’ve spoken about the shame that comes with experiences like this. When were you able to view yourself and what had happened to you with compassion and understanding?

Actually, being a part of the Drama Queens podcast was big for that. Being able to watch the show back and being forced to face myself at that time, day after day after day. (Laughs.) It’s a miracle that I said yes to that show because I was like, “I don’t want to. I would like to be over this chapter of shame,” but I said yes. It has been very healing in me, learning to love young Joy and forgive her and have grace for her. It’s still hard. I am hard on myself. I’m a perfectionist in many ways. I do not like to make mistakes. I’m learning that it’s okay, and I’m trying to get better at being comfortable with it. But I’ve always had my value tied up in my ability to solve problems and do things efficiently and get shit done when nobody else can and be the person in the crisis who can handle this situation. I’ve always taken a lot of pride in that, and so to be humbled to such a degree where I’ve fucked up my life so royally that it’s hard to claim those things anymore? It’s a piece of humble pie. I’m eating crow, not ravens. (Laughs.)

Do you feel like your time in the cult still affects you, personally or professionally? Or have you been able to create enough distance? 

Abuse, regardless, infiltrates and affects people for many years after they’ve experienced it. You begin to always be on edge. There’s always this sense of “I think I’m safe, but when is something going to happen again? When’s it going to come up again?” I was talking with my boyfriend about this last night. We had a conversation about some really hard topics and processing some things in the relationship and it was difficult. I felt really raw and vulnerable. We had a really nice dinner. It was lovely. We were feeling close and connected. Then in the car ride, on the way home, it slowly escalated into another difficult conversation and my whole body shut down. I went numb.

I couldn’t even really recall the conversation we were having. It was like this old body trigger of just haze. I can’t deal with the trauma of this because it was the same pattern, even though it was a completely normal, relational dynamic. But because of what my body’s been through, I was feeling “hard conversation, deep, raw. I feel bad about myself. I’m starting to feel better. I’m open, I feel loving, I feel loved, and then I’m getting beaten down again.” That’s what my body was telling myself, and I had a full trauma response to it. This is 14 years later since I’ve been out [of the cult].  There are so many little things like that that you just deal with when they arise. You don’t know that they’re there until they come up.

I feel like anytime we experience anything traumatic, you could feel like you’re okay, but that past stays in a drawer and sometimes it’ll come out, then it goes back into the drawer.

Yeah, it’s like, all these other people have the key to your drawer. Why did you just open that? Why can’t I just leave it locked? When you experience that kind of trauma, too, you then don’t trust anybody. You don’t trust yourself because you’re like, “I chose this. I’m the one that walked into this, so clearly, my radar is bad, and I don’t know how to trust anybody else. I can’t trust any pastors. I can’t trust any friends. I can’t trust a therapist. Anybody could be a bad guy.” You start walking through the world just looking at every corner like, “You could be a bad guy; you could be the bad guy.” Then you clam up. I had to come to a place of spiritual reconciliation because I had no choice. I’m not capable of walking through the world with that much suspicion, and certainly not as an artist, you can’t. You have to trust people now in your career.

At the height of your OTH fame, other career opportunities were being offered but you declined because you prioritized this group. Then after the show ended, you wrote that it was not necessarily easy to just book projects despite being on this show for so long. Now that time has passed, what do you envision for your career and has that changed at all? Are there still projects that you’re seeking to do?

Absolutely! I am a storyteller through and through. You will never be able to stop me from telling stories. I would love to continue my career as an actor. I feel like such a character actor. It’s been one of the difficult things as a young woman in Hollywood that was often [being] put in the ingenue category. I’m watching Colin Farrell in The Penguin right now, and I’m like, “He is having so much fun! I want to do that shit! Somebody put me in a makeup chair for four hours and let me pretend to be somebody completely different.” I am dying to do real, weird character work. I just love it. It’s so fun, and I don’t get the chance that often. I would love to be able to explore lots of different things. 

I still write musicals. I’ve been working on a musical about Pocahontas and the history of how our country started with the real story of her tribe. I’ve also got a musical in the works about the first science fiction writer who was a woman in the 1600s, so my brain is always firing on all synapses. I’m excited to just keep creating in whatever capacity I can. I want to do Broadway. I had my worst audition of my life for Moulin Rouge! Nailed it with the director, and then the next day I went in for the producers and totally choked. I wasn’t Satine, I was Lucy Ricardo sneaking onto the stage of the Copacabana. Horrendous. (Laughs.) So yeah, put me back [in]! Give me another chance for Broadway in some capacity or the West End.

Dinner for Vampires is out now.