'One Tree Hill' Star Bethany Joy Lenz "Disappeared For 10 Years" After Joining A Cult

The actress, who's currently promoting her book Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!), recently revealed that her cast mates on One Tree Hill (which she auditioned for while already a part of the Big House Family Cult) could tell something fishy was going on — and that Craig Sheffer, who played Uncle Keith until season 3, even said something to her.

"I could see it on their faces," she tells People. "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.'"

At first, the group had a lot of aspects that fans have loved about One Tree Hill for years, like connection, emotional intimacy, and "the idea that someone out there says, 'No matter what you do or how badly you might behave or what dumb choices you make, I still love you, and I'm here for you.'”

She met the pastor at 20 years old, when she joined a Saturday night Bible study in LA. At first, it was "nothing to be suspicious about," she says in an episode of Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast, because it was just like other church gatherings she'd been a part of. But before long she was sucked in, and basically "disappeared for ten years."

The loving environment morphed into one that Lenz says villainized independence, and her One Tree Hill costars quickly realized where she was at. The cult's control continued to expand as they told her not to trust her cast mates (and to isolate herself instead), caused her to stop communication with her father for six years, and led her to turn down major movies. Oh, they also took upwards of $2 million from her.

Bethany Joy Lenz ended up marrying the son of the cult leader around 2005, and despite the fact she'd always had "crazy sex drive," she didn't desire sex with him, and it got to the point the couple was put on a literal schedule. Even though she hated it, she believed her duty as a wife was to have sex, so she agreed. “I take marriage seriously, and I made a promise before God. This is something I really want to figure out how to make it work."

But when her husband came to town, her "stomach dropped every single time." The schedule affected her so deeply that it gave her PTSD in future relationships. However, it was still too risky to leave. "The stakes were so high," she tells People. "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."

During the period of filming the show, she used the role of Haley James Scott as a sort of escapism. She'd lean into her onscreen relationship with James Lafferty while filming, but clarifies she "never had to worry" about developing feelings for him off camera: “I always sort of saw him in real life as a brotherly figure and he was lovely.”

However, while she treasures her relationship with Lafferty, fans have theorized a feud between Lenz and Hilarie Burton (who played Peyton Sawyer until season 6), a rumor that first started when fans realized they weren't following each other on social media. “I love Hilarie,” she tells Alex Cooper. “I have always and will always and I don’t have any problem with her...There have been some bizarre misunderstandings that I really hope we can figure out one day, but I love that girl."

When One Tree Hill wrapped, and Bethany Joy Lenz started therapy, she had the breakthrough that would change everything. Her therapist pushed her to set boundaries, and helped her leave her physically abusive relationship. But having to start a new life was far from easy.

"To leave a TV show after nine seasons, to leave all my friends that I had known for the last 10 years, to leave my marriage, to leave the state, all at the same time," she says. "Not knowing how I was going to make rent because all the money was gone...I had many, many weeping-on-the-floor nights, just trying to figure out how to manage and what I was going to do and what to do with my emotions, the anger, the injustice, all those things."

So why talk about the experience now? "I don't think of [opening up] as brave," she says. "I think of it as important. Living silently in the suffering I experienced, I don't know if that helps anyone...I think of this more as the right thing to do."