Bethany Joy Lenz was too young to realise that she was part of a cult — but some of her One Tree Hill Costars tried to warn her.
In her upcoming memoir Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!), the 43-year-old actress opens up about her experience devoted to a small, ultra-Christian group led by a manipulative pastor in Idaho from the time she moved to L.A at the age of 20 to pursue her acting career.
Discussing the memoir with People magazine, Lenz recalled how she was in denial about the fact that she was in a cult throughout for the entire nine-year run of the show.
“I could see it on their faces,” she recalled about her OTH family. “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…”
Craig Sheffer, who played Uncle Keith on OTH, told Lenz point-blank that she was in a cult.
“I was like, No, no, no. Cults are weird. Cults are people in robes chanting crazy things and drinking Kool-Aid. That’s not what we do!’” Lenz admitted.
“The stakes were so high. 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,” she reflected, noting that she was desperate for a place to “belong.”
Lenz eventually had her eyes opened and managed to leave the cult as well as her marriage.
