“One Tree Hill” star Bethany Joy Lenz is still grappling with leaving the cult that controlled her life for a decade.
“There’s something really powerful in putting things out in the open and being an open book and being honest in the good, bad and the ugly,” Lenz told Cosmopolitan in a recent interview.
Lenz, who is releasing a memoir about her experiences titled “Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show,” was part of the Big House Family, a commune-like community based in Idaho.
“Most people would think a celebrity would never be attracted to a cult and that cults are completely ridiculous, but cults have very charismatic leaders who are incredibly luring and promise the community, connection, and a culture of secrecy, which most celebrities crave,” Mike Diamond, Certified Addiction Recovery Expert, Celebrity interventionist, and the author of “A Dose of Positivity,” told Fox News Digital. “These cults look to offer celebrities the protection they need from the public eye and that can be alluring.”
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While starring on “One Tree Hill” as Haley, Lenz’s affiliation with The Big House Family led her to speak out about things she didn’t like on the show, like risqué wardrobe options for her character.
“Being part of this group, it felt like the responsibility was even bigger because I felt a sense of duty to my belief system. And so I was even more unbendable on set when it came to things that I was uncomfortable with or didn’t agree with,” she said.
Her time on the show helped her breakthrough the “despair and depression” she was feeling while under the influence of the cult.
“Your body doesn’t know you’re acting. If you’re crying, you’re crying. And I was living a life nine months out of the year in a happy, loving, playful, romantic relationship that wasn’t real, but my body was living it. At the same time, I was experiencing despair and depression, no romance, a total lack of feeling seen or enjoyed. That was really difficult to reconcile,” she explained.
“But I’m so grateful that I did have those experiences in my body of feeling loved and enjoyed and seen and romantic and all of those things because it reminded me that that part of me was still alive. It wasn’t that I was broken or couldn’t experience those things,” Lenz added.
“In a way, I think that’s one of the contributing factors to why I think ‘One Tree Hill’ saved me, because I was consistently able to live in a place that reminded me of who I am.”
Licensed therapist and relationship coach and expert Julie Mangus explained to Fox News Digital previously, “When people are in a vulnerable state or feeling lost or overwhelmed with life, especially as new celebrities in the profession, all of a sudden having successes and not knowing what to do with that, success and new-found money and fame can be overwhelming,” Mangus said. “And a situation like a cult might give someone a greater sense of purpose, clarity and grounding to how they fit back in the world.”
Lenz told People Magazine this month that the group “looked so normal” initially with weekly Bible studies. “And it was at first, and then it just morphed, but by the time it started morphing, I was too far into the relationships to really notice. And I was very young.”
“Nowadays, the ‘modern cult’ is less of the stalking lion and more of the proverbial snake lying wait in the tall grass,” Doug Eldridge of Achilles PR told Fox News Digital.
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Eldridge cited “pay-for-play courses” from people who tout themselves as life coaches, spiritualists and more, with promises to “heal your pain and transform your life.”
“Much like the more traditional, headline-grabbing cults, they play on common themes, like sympathy, empathy, shared experiences, and an amorphous promise of a brighter tomorrow. It’s in our nature as humans to look for ways to lighten the load in some way. Sadly, there are people out there willing to take advantage of that naiveté, that hurt, and that search for a better self,” he said.
“If we’re talking about modern day cults—in the form of transformation architects and other self-proclaimed lifestyle gurus—their intention is monetary, their execution is imprecise, and their impact is pseudo-iatrogenic. Sadly, these predators are able to find the gazelle with the weak leg and separate them from the herd. Anyone who’s watched a nature documentary knows what happens next,” Eldridge added.
“Smallville” actress Allison Mack was part of a group that initially offered a self-help angle to its members, the now-infamous NXIVM group led by Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman.
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In 2017, some members came forward to claim there was a secret organization within the group called the Vow, a group of women who were branded and sometimes slept with Raniere. Some were made to recruit “slaves” for the group.
Raniere, Mack and others were arrested and charged with sex trafficking, identity theft, money laundering and extortion, among other crimes. Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges, a move that freed her from the sex trafficking charges.
She was sentenced to three years in prison and was released in July 2023 after serving two years.
India Oxenberg, daughter of actress Catherine Oxenberg, explained to “The FOX True Crime Podcast” how she was pulled into NXIVM’s influence.
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“I was feeling, like, young and intimidated and kind of just, like, maybe this is where I’m supposed to be,” she recalled. “So it was not like when I when I look back, obviously, you know, hindsight is 20/20. I can see red flags now, but at the time I did not.”
She escaped the group after seven years, suffering abuse and sexual assault while indoctrinated into the “cult within the cult” and later worked with the FBI to build cases against Raniere and his co-conspirators.
“I’ve had to really, like, come to terms with, like, what’s loving for me, what works for me in my life,” she said. “And that isn’t based on somebody else’s standards, it’s entirely based on mine. And a lot of it has to do with self-respect and also self-knowledge, which is something that I think you can either gain from a traumatic experience or hide from. Like, I’m motivated to speak about these things, but yeah, it still hurts.”
WATCH: NXIVM SURVIVOR INDIA OXENBERG DETAILS LIFE AFTER ESCAPING CULT
Lenz said she felt immense shame from her experiences, but her faith helped pull her out of it after she left the cult.
“I found a much more authentic faith because I realized that I was not actually living my own life. I wasn’t having my own relationship with God. I was putting it off on other people to do it for me. When I finally got real and accepted that I couldn’t do enough to earn God’s love—I couldn’t do all the right things—the idea of shame became so much less scary,” she told the outlet.
She continued, “The more authentic I got with God, the more I saw that He could handle me in all of my mess, my anger, my fear, and that I was going to be okay to make mistakes. Instead of spending my life trying to control everything so that I could be a perfect person, I felt free to be a mess, which is really what I was searching for in the group all along.”
Diamond said, “What most people don’t realize is that being a celebrity can be extremely lonely. A lot of celebrities I know personally have to protect themselves from the public. We all want connection, community, and a sense of culture.”
JOAQUIN PHOENIX, MICHELLE PFEIFFER, ROSE MCGOWAN AMONG HOLLYWOOD STARS LINKED TO CULTS
Magnus previously highlighted that many cults “usually provide a faith-based element or a way of bettering yourself towards a greater good or purpose or to carry out a religious agenda with a leader in charge.”
Brothers Joaquin and River Phoenix and actress Rose McGowan were raised in the Children of God cult, started by David Berg, who wanted to combine Christianity with the free love movement of the late ’60s.
Things initially began normally, but over the years, people began reporting child abuse, child marriage and separating children from their parents.
Joaquin Phoenix told Playboy in 2014 that once his parents realized what was happening, they took him and his siblings, including River, Rain, Liberty and Summer, out of the situation.
“I think my parents thought they’d found a community that shared their ideals. Cults rarely advertise themselves as such. It’s usually someone saying, ‘We’re like-minded people. This is a community,’ but I think the moment my parents realized there was something more to it, they got out” he told the outlet.
McGowan’s father also took the family out of the cult when sexual relationships between adults and children were being pushed on members.
“As strong as I like to think I’ve always been, I’m sure I could have been broken,” McGowan told People magazine in 2011. “I know I got out by the skin of my teeth.”
Fox News Digital’s Caroline Thayer, Emily Trainham and Christina Coulter contributed to this report.
