How ‘One Tree Hill’ Star Bethany Pleasure Lenz Acquired Lured Right into a Cult (Unique)

Within the early 2000s, actress Bethany Pleasure Lenz was having fun with life as one of many stars of One Tree Hill, the favored teen drama that additionally starred Sophia Bush, Chad Michael Murray, and Hilarie Burton.

However all through filming, she tells PEOPLE, she led a double life: On the identical time, she was additionally deeply dedicated to a small, ultra-Christian group led by a shady pastor in Idaho, who managed her profession, life selections and, ultimately, her checking account.

By the point she acquired out a decade later, she needed to begin over with hardly something to indicate for the practically 9 years she spent on the sequence — and a sense of remorse and disgrace for not realizing she was in a cult.

In her memoir Dinner for Vampires Life on a Cult TV Present (Whereas additionally in an Precise Cult!) (out Oct. 22), Lenz tells the entire story for the primary time.

“I do not consider it as courageous,” she says, of why she’s lastly opening up. “I consider it as essential. Dwelling silently within the struggling I skilled, I do not know if that helps anybody.” She hopes her e book will empower others in related conditions: “I consider this extra as the fitting factor to do.” 

Lenz first met the pastor by means of a bible examine she’d joined when she moved to L.A. at 20 to additional her performing profession.

“I had all the time been on the lookout for a spot to belong,” she explains. She’d grown up an Evangelical Christian, the one little one of fogeys who married younger and moved round quite a bit earlier than divorcing when Lenz was 16. Performing and her church group had been her anchors and a good way to fulfill like-minded folks.

At first, she cherished her bible examine. They’d sing, worship and have philosophical conversations about God and life’s which means. Discovering that group felt like “water in a desert” to the younger actress, who says she had by no means earlier than had that sort of connection.

“We crave that sort of intimacy,” she says. “The concept somebody on the market says, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do or how badly you would possibly behave or what dumb selections you make, I nonetheless love you, and I am right here for you.’”

When a visiting pastor she calls “Les” started to return to the examine nights and lead the conversations, she did not suppose there was something unusual about it — even when he satisfied others to maneuver to a “Huge Home” in Idaho to stay in a small, commune-like surroundings.

 “It nonetheless appeared regular,” Lenz says. “After which it simply morphed. However by the point it began morphing, I used to be too far into the relationships to note.” She provides, “Plus, I used to be so younger.”

She says the truth that she was in a cult wasn’t misplaced on her One Tree Hill costars.

“I might see it on their faces,” she says of their reactions. “However I might justify it, like, ‘I could not presumably be in a cult. It is simply that I’ve acquired entry to a relationship with God and folks in a means that everyone else desires, however they do not know get it,'” she explains.

She even says her costar Craig Sheffer instructed her level clean she was in a cult early into filming.

“I used to be like, ‘No, no, no. Cults are bizarre. Cults are folks in robes chanting loopy issues and ingesting Kool-Help,” she instructed him. “That is not what we do!'” 

Finally, the cracks started to indicate. however Lenz did not know that she might get out. She’d married a fellow “household” member and in 2012, a yr after the delivery of her daughter Rosie, she realized she needed to go away each her marriage and the cult. However it wasn’t straightforward.

“The stakes had been so excessive,” she says. “They had been my solely mates. I used to be married into this group. I had constructed my complete life round it. If I admitted that I used to be fallacious … the whole lot else would come crumbling down.”

To learn extra about Bethany Pleasure Lenz and the way she lastly managed to go away the cult, learn this week’s subject of PEOPLE on stands Friday.

Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Present (Whereas additionally in an Precise Cult!) comes out Oct. 22 and is obtainable for preorder now, wherever books are offered.