Bethany Joy Lenz Explains How One Tree Hill 'Saved' Her From Cult

One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz reveals details about her life-changing role in One Tree Hill.

One Tree Hill actor Bethany Joy Lenz has revealed how being on the show helped save her from a cult.

In an interview with Variety, Lenz spoke candidly about her ordeal after she had earlier admitted on her podcast to having been in a cult for ten years while on One Tree Hill. According to the actress, her castmates and the crew all knew, "It was the whisper behind the scenes, like, 'You know, she's in a cult.' For a while, they were all trying to save me and rescue me, which is lovely and so amazing to be cared about in that way. But I was very stubborn. I was really committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make," she said.

Lenz spoke about how the cult operated and alienated her from those closest to her, including her One Tree Hill co-stars, "The nature of a group like that is isolation; they have to make you distrust everyone around you so that the only people you trust are, first and foremost, the leadership and then, people within the group if the leadership approves of them, and isn't in the middle of pitting you against each other, which happens all the time also. It built a deep wedge of distrust between me and my cast and crew," she revealed. "As much as I loved them and cared about them, there was a fundamental thought, if I'm in pain, if I'm suffering, I can't go to any of these people. So you feel incredibly lonely," Lenz added.

Lenz ultimately believes that the popular show rescued her, "In a lot of ways, One Tree Hill saved my life, because I was there nine months out of the year in North Carolina. I had a lot of flying back and forth, a lot of people visiting and things like that, but my life was really built in North Carolina. And I think that spatial separation made a big difference when it was time for me to wake up," she explained.

Why Lenz is Opening Up About Her Experience

Lenz hopes that what she experienced will help her and others heal, "What I came to realize was that there's actually a lot of power in exposing that shame to the light and allowing new information to come in," she said. "And there's not just power in that for me, but my hope is that, and really why I wanted to talk about it, is because I think it can be really healing for a lot of other people. I know I'm not the only one," she added.

Lenz starred as Hayley James Scott in One Tree Hill alongside Chad Michael Murray, Hilarie Burton, Sophia Bush and James Lafferty. One Tree Hill is available for streaming on Hulu