Bethany Joy Lenz Explains Why She Didn’t Question the Cult She Was In

When Bethany Joy Lenz started to question parts of her life, her “justification” for being in a cult started to crumble.

“Enough times you hear the word ‘cult,’ but the justification of it can’t possibly be that I’m actually in a cult,” Lenz, 43, told People in an interview published on Tuesday, October 15. “It’s just that I’ve got access to a relationship with God, [a] relationship with people in a way that everybody else really wants, but they don’t know how to get and they’re too afraid to be that vulnerable with each other. We’ve got it and they just don’t understand.”

That was the “rationalization” the former One Tree Hill star used during her 10-year stint “growing up in the Evangelical Church.”

Lenz explained that she was “always” looking for somewhere to belong while she was younger.

“My parents were wonderful people with a lot of their own stuff to deal with and they had me very young,” she continued. “It was just a gap … of all the wonderful things they did as parents, this was a gap in parenting — like we all have as parents.”

Upon looking for her “place to belong,” Lenz found a group “attached to a higher spiritual experience.” She noted that it “looked so normal” when she first joined but it eventually “morphed” and at that point, she was too far gone. (The synopsis of her upcoming memoir, Dinner for Vampires, reveals that she was involved in The Big House Family.)

“I was very young, I didn’t question the group, [but] I questioned my marriage,” she explained. “For me, being involved in something like that where there’s — I don’t know that I like the term ‘brainwashing’ — I think it’s more just such high control that we convince ourselves of things all the time.”

Lenz decided that this is what she wanted to believe because she had created her whole life around the group — including her marriage and her daughter, Rosie, born in 2011.

“The stakes were really high if I admitted that I was wrong, if I admitted there’s holes in this, something’s off,” Lenz told People. “The whole construct of everything else comes crumbling down, so I was not in a position to be able to question anything.”

Lenz first revealed that she had been in a cult for 10 years during a July 2023 episode of the “Drama Queens” podcast. Initially, she was hesitant to write about her experience, but her forthcoming memoir — set to be published on Tuesday, October 22 — details the experience, including her departure from the group.

Lenz explained that when One Tree Hill ended after nine seasons (she played Haley James Scott on the show from 2003 to 2012), leaving her friends and husband behind with her baby at her side was a “legitimately incredibly difficult” time in her life.

“Just me and my baby in Hollywood like, ‘Hire me, anyone,’” she recalled, telling the outlet that her daughter knows “some” of her mom’s story. “Not knowing how I was going to make rent because all the money was gone.”

Now, Lenz said she found “peace,” telling People, “I’m going to be OK.”