Bethany Joy Lenz reveals ‘One Tree Hill’ costars tried to ‘rescue’ her from cult

Bethany Joy Lenz got candid about her decade-long involvement in a cult and how her One Tree Hill costars came to her rescue.

Last month, Lenz touched up on the matter during her Drama Queens podcast, which she co-hosts with Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan.

Now, in an interview with Variety, Lenz, 42, detailed why she first opened up about the cult, which she declined to identify by name.

The actress told the outlet that she had been in the cult during the “entirety” of my time on the popular CW show. Lenz was only 22 when she was cast on the show, which ran for nine seasons from 2003 to 2012.

Lenz added that while she never publicly opened up about it, there were ‘whispers’ and her castmates also had been trying to ‘rescue’ during that time.

“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 told Variety.

Lenz, who portrayed the sweet Haley James Scott on the show, said her involvement in the cult began as a home group Bible study in Los Angeles and later developed an emphasis on “isolation.”

In the end, she recounted that the show eventually “saved” her due to its filming location.

“I was there nine months out of the year in North Carolina,” she said. "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.”