Bethany Joy Lenz says “One Tree Hill ”costars' support after she left cult 'made a big difference'
The actress was involved in an undisclosed religious group for a decade and is writing a book about her experience.
It wasn't easy for Bethany Joy Lenz to leave the cult she'd been involved in for 10 years — but her costars on One Tree Hill helped give her a sense of safety when she made the fateful decision.
The actress, who joined an undisclosed religious group after the success of the show's first season and left in 2012, said during a recent podcast appearance that her castmates made a huge difference in her transition back to normal life simply through their "sheer presence and professionalism and kindness" each day on set.
"They knew I was a smart person. I was a good actor. You can't be a good actor without being smart. You can't dissect a script without being able to assess things," Lenz, 42, said on the latest episode of Southern Living's Biscuits & Jam podcast. "But I had a big blind spot in my life — and everybody does — and mine was something that I was going to have to work out on my own."
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Bethany Joy LenzThe One Tree Hill cast made an effort to comfort her in little ways. "I feel like a lot of the people there, whether consciously or subconsciously, knew that just their presence and being an encouragement and letting me know that they still loved and cared about me in spite of the fact that I was a little weird, that made a big difference," Lenz said. "It made me feel like there was a safety."
She continued, "When it came time for me to leave that group, I did still feel like there were many open arms and that felt really, really good, and it was very helpful."
The Drama Queens podcast host, who is writing a book about her cult experience slated to be released next year, said she wants people who have similarly fallen victim to religious groups to know that "they're not alone" and "there is life after trauma." She described her time in the cult as "10 years of pretty intense mental, spiritual, financial abuse" and acknowledged that it "can feel so overwhelming to come out of that and feel like, 'I don't even know where to start, I'm back at square one.'"
Lenz noted that survivors are not only forced to navigate their own personal feelings of shame, but that there are also "so many people who don't understand" how a person could find themself in that situation in the first place.
"They hear the word 'cult' or they think, 'Spiritual abuse? That sounds real hippy-dippy,'" she said. "But it is very real and people experience it, not just on a group level, but one-on-one relationships with a partner, or sometimes with family members. It's insidious, and it exists not just in the big, bad places that get all the attention like cults, and so I want to create a space that feels safe."
With her book, Lenz hopes to educate people on how to "avoid getting into those traps" in the first place. And, she added, "If you're already in that trap, and you don't know how to get out, maybe this will help inspire you and give you some ideas to be able to know what's normal, and what's not normal, how to have boundaries, how to recognize it."
Lenz previously credited One Tree Hill with saving her life because the show's busy filming schedule required her to be separated from the cult for extended periods of time. She also said her costars would often try to intervene where they could. "For a while, they were all trying to save and rescue me, which is lovely," she said on Drama Queens. "And so amazing to be cared about in that way."
Listen to the podcast above for more from Lenz.
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