Lenz says her 'valuable experience' would make for a good book.
Bethany Joy Lenz dropped a bit of a bombshell in the latest episode of her podcast. Not only has she thought about writing a book, she's already narrowed down her subject -- the 10 years she said she spent in a cult.
Lenz and her former One Tree Hill co-stars, Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan, chopped it up on their Drama Queens podcast when the subject about whether any of them ever saw themselves adding "author" to their bios, with Lenz saying "for sure."
"I was in a cult for 10 years," the 42-year-old actress revealed. "That would be a really valuable experience to write about, and the recovery; 10 years of recovery after that. So, there's a lot to tell."
Lenz, who portrayed Haley James Scott on the hit WB series from 2003 to 2012, didn't share any specifics behind her claim -- in particular, the kind of cult she belonged to or the experience she endured in that decade. But back in May 2021, Lenz took issue with a billboard promoting a church headed by a self-described "iconoclast and futurist."
In a very lengthy caption on Instagram at the time, Lenz said she attended the church on and off for two years, but claimed she became disturbed by "the level of control displayed" by the church's leader.
"The hierarchy in this 'church,' the level of abuse that I’ve consistently heard goes on behind the scenes and how everything centers around the Leader is textbook 101 of cults," she wrote, in part. "And usually, unless you’re in the inner circle, it’s much harder to spot. Other signs are how the entire group will immediately devalue anyone who says something against them (enjoy the comments), an inability to question the Leadership who is not accountable to anyone (yeah yeah accountable to the congregation... get real) the delusion that they are onto something that no one else has."
On the podcast, Lenz also explained that putting pen to paper won't be so easy.
While she admitted that, yes, she has written about the past, it's for her eyes only. Doing it for the world to see? Well, that's a whole different animal.
"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," she added. "But I do write. I write all the time."
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