“One Tree Hill” actress Bethany Joy Lenz is opening up about being in a cult for a decade.
“I was in a cult for 10 years,” the 42-year-old said on Monday’s episode of her “Drama Queens” podcast. Lenz hosts the podcast with former “One Tree Hill” co-stars Hilarie Burton Morgan and Sophia Bush. “One Tree Hill” alum Michaela McManus joined Monday as a guest.
“That would be a really valuable experience to write about, and the recovery,” Lenz said, noting it took another 10 years to recover from her experience in the unnamed cult. “There’s a lot to tell.”
Lenz kept the details to a minimum. However, she did say that she writes privately about that period of her life − but she’s not ready to fully open up just yet.
Eventually, she would like to be an author, she said. But, she’s not sure when she’ll be ready to take that step, given she feels there’s pressure to get it “right” when she tells her story.
Plus, “I don’t know how much I can say because there are still people and legal things in place that make it more complicated for the timing of that. But I do write. I write all the time,” she said.
Lenz has “some projects” coming up, though, she said.
‘I was told I had to’:Sophia Bush says ‘One Tree Hill’ stars were pressured to do magazine cover
Lenz and her co-hosts have opened up on the podcast about struggles during their time “One Tree Hill” before.
The actresses, who starred as Brooke Davis, Peyton Sawyer and Haley James Scott on the WB/CW teen drama, got candid about an unpleasant photoshoot experience they had during the series’ run.
Chatting in November on the “Drama Queens” podcast, Bush and Burton claimed they were goaded into shooting a suggestive cover for Maxim magazine, while Lenz revealed she was excluded from the shoot because of her weight.
Bush added that the experience violated her agency and contributed to her feeling of being unsafe on the “One Tree Hill” set.
And they’ve shared outside the podcast, too.
During an appearance on Ashley Graham’s “Pretty Big Deal” podcast in 2020, Bush alleged that her boss was inappropriate. She didn’t name the boss she was referencing during the chat, but she has previously alleged that showrunner Mark Schwahn sexually harassed cast members.
“I remember my boss kept writing scenes for me to be in my underwear, and I was like, ‘I’m not doing this. This is inappropriate.’ Like, ‘I don’t think this is what we should be teaching 16-year-old girls to be doing and to be seeking validation this way,’ ” Bush told Graham.
Bush, Burton and other female cast members wrote a letter in 2017 accusing Schwahn of “traumatizing” sexual harassment during the show’s 9-year run. After an investigation, Schwahn was fired from the E! drama “The Royals.”
Contributing: Edward Segarra, Sara M Moniuszko
