Heavy/Getty Hallmark star Bethany Joy Lenz
Actress and singer Bethany Joy Lenz is opening up about how she wound up in a religious cult for a decade. Lenz — whose next Hallmark movie, “A Biltmore Christmas,” premieres on November 26, 2023 — has begun sharing details about how she was lured into the group just as she was rising to stardom on the long-running CW series “One Tree Hill.”
Lenz, 42, shocked fans by declaring that she’d been in a cult during a July episode of the “Drama Queens” podcast, which she co-hosts with former “One Tree Hill” castmates Hilarie Burton and Sophia Bush. She has since begun writing a book about her ordeal and sharing details of her experience in select media interviews.
On the October 30 episode of “The Tamron Hall Show,” Lenz explained how she was lured into the “high demand group,” which she has not yet named, and how its leaders isolated her from friends and family even as she was skyrocketing to fame.
Here’s what you need to know:
Bethany Joy Lenz Says Cult Leaders Targeted Her Because She Longed for Connection
Lenz told Hall that, looking back on her move at age 22 from New York to Los Angeles, she realizes she was a prime candidate for cult leaders to prey upon. Yearning for a sense of belonging in a new city, she joined a weekly Bible study circle that felt “natural and normal” to her.
She recalled, “It really just felt like, ‘Oh! Community! God just dropped this community in my lap and it seems really lovely.'”
In an August interview with Variety, Lenz pointed out that no one joins a cult, or “high demand group,” thinking that’s what it is. Rather, she said, she thought she’d found a circle of fellow faith-centered 20-somethings and didn’t recognize the signs that its leader was “sociopathic.”
She told Variety, “Nobody walks into a situation and says, “Sign me up. I want to f*** up the rest of my life.”
But, she explained to Hall, “These kinds of malignant narcissists that are in these positions of power, often they know what to look for. So they know how to target people based on, you know, within a few conversations, they’re able to dissect who’s going to be susceptible to their gaslighting and love bombing and all those things — and who’s gonna catch on. So they target people intentionally.”
The big difference between a regular Bible study and the group she got lured into, Lenz told Hall, was the way she was slowly convinced to isolate from her friends, family and anyone else “who is not a part of or supportive of the group.”
When her parents first pointed out that she was spending all of her time with those in the group, Lenz recalled feeling very defensive and unwilling to listen. The same happened when her “One Tree Hill” castmates expressed any concern. But her group’s leader, Lenz told Hall, would often remind her that she just needed to “pray for them because they just don’t understand.”
Lenz said, “There’s a sense of superiority that starts to kick in when you feel like, ‘Oh, I found something really special. I found something that nobody else has.”
Missing out on life events in her loved ones’ lives has been “the most painful, shameful, difficult parts,” Lenz told Variety.
“Knowing that I missed nieces and nephews growing up, weddings, birthdays, funerals, major events,” she said. “As a survival mechanism, when you fully are dependent on this social structure, you have to shut off the part of your heart that cares deeply.”
Bethany Joy Lenz Says Cult Leader Used ‘Love Bombing’ Tactics to Convince Her to Isolate From Friends & Family
Lenz told Hall that successful cult leaders masterfully manage to erode members’ confidence and sense of self-worth over time.
“They first strip you of your trust with your family, then your friends, and then anybody else who’s peripherally not supportive,” she told Hall, adding that “love bombing” is a common tactic.
“I felt like I was being loved,” Lenz explained. “This is what love bombing really does. They start to convince you that you’re amazing, you’re wonderful. And then they tear you down and they’ll start picking every little thing that they can figure out. And so they’ll point those out and tear you down until you just feel like nothing, and then they start to build you back up again.”
When that happens, she said, “It’s like, ‘Oh, these people love me in spite of the fact that I’m just such a mess, I’m so awful. You love me anyway! I need that in my life!”
“And the hard part is we are all broken and we do all need unconditional love,” Lenz continued. “And to use that as a mechanism to really mess with someone and then abuse them and get what you want out of them, it not only messes with your ability to just trust people, but your ability to trust God and that source that we need to find love from.”
The saving grace for Lenz, she told Hall, was that she did not live with the group full-time, since she had to film “One Tree Hill” in North Carolina. When the show ended in 2012, she had a young daughter and began to realize she didn’t want to raise her within the confines of her group in L.A. So she began to pull away and realize how much her sense of self had eroded.
In a May 2023 Instagram post, Lenz paid tribute to the late Timothy Keller, founder of Redeemer Church in New York City, and alluded to how he helped her heal the religious and emotional trauma she’d been through previously.
“This man changed my life,” she wrote. “The only reason I’m still a Christian today is because, 10 years ago, after many years of faith being used against me as a tool of manipulation, Tim Keller taught me how to re-build my faith using reason and logic. A belief system that fully engages my mind while still leaving room for wonder and mystery.”