In 2023, One Tree Hillalum Bethany Joy Lenz opened up about living in a cult for 10 years. For fans of the actress, the news was quite a surprise. For her OTH co-stars, however, they knew it all along.
Talking to People this week as their new cover star, Lenz explained how she joined the cult, and that everyone in the OTH cast knew – and even called her out on it.
“I had always been looking for a place to belong,” Bethany explained to the outlet. For the actress, being an only child with two parents who “had a lot of their own stuff to deal with” meant that some piece in her life was missing.
“It just so happened that my gap intersected with my experience growing up in the Evangelical Church so I was looking for a place to belong that was also attached to a higher spiritual experience,” Lenz said.
Shortly after, she began attending a seemingly “normal” bible study with a group at a pastor’s house. “It still looked normal and then it just morphed,” she remembered of the cult, which was named The Big House Family. “But by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to notice.”
‘Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)’
As Lenz continued living in the cult (and even marrying into it), she starred as Haley in One Tree Hill.
“I could see it on their faces,” Lenz said of her co-stars’ reactions. “But I’d justify it, like, ‘I couldn’t possibly be in a cult.'”
“It’s just that I’ve got access to a relationship with God and people in a way that everybody else wants, but they don’t know how to get it,” she explained.
By 2012, Lenz left the cult and divorced her husband, Michael Galeotti. “The stakes were so high,” she said. “They were my only friends. I was married into this group. I had built my entire life around it. If I admitted that I was wrong—everything else would come crumbling down.”
Now, she’s opening up about all of it in her upcoming memoir, Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!). The memoir, which is currently at 30% off on Amazon, promises an in-depth look into her experiences. “Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe,” the description reads.
Before you go, click here to see celebrities who have left the Church of Scientology.
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