Bethany Joy Lenz has always been a familiar face to television audiences. As Haley James Scott on the long-running drama One Tree Hill, she was part of a show that defined a generation of early-2000s teen television. But behind the camera, as she reveals in her memoir Dinner With Vampires, she was living a very different life—one shaped by devotion to a small Christian cult that controlled her decisions, her money, and, for a time, her sense of self.
Now 44, Lenz is reclaiming that narrative. Since the release of Dinner With Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Series (While Also in an Actual Cult!), she has been inundated with messages from women who recognize their own stories in hers. “I get messages every single day from women who’ve read the book and are helped by it,” she told People. “Women who’ve been in abusive relationships, or in abusive church environments, or toxic family dynamics. That’s why I wrote it. That’s the stuff that’s going to last.”
Lenz entered the group while One Tree Hill was at the height of its popularity. She describes the cult’s leader in Idaho as a manipulative pastor who slowly assumed control over her career, her personal life, and eventually her finances. By the time she left in 2012, her marriage had ended, she was raising a young daughter alone, and the earnings from nearly a decade on network television—close to $2 million—were gone.
The actress admits the years immediately after her departure were filled with moments of despair. “I had many, many weeping-on-the-floor nights, just trying to figure out how to manage and what I was going to do,” she said. The financial devastation was compounded by shame—how could she have given so much of herself away? “It still feels gauche to talk about money,” she added. “But it was hard. Very hard.”
And yet, she says, she no longer sees those lost years as wasted. Her daughter, Rosie, born in 2011, remains her anchor and her greatest reason for gratitude. “First of all, I wouldn’t have my daughter. It was all worth it because of her.”
Her memoir, she says, has also sparked healing conversations with former co-stars. Lenz co-hosts the Drama Queens podcast with Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton Morgan, and says several castmates reached out after the book’s release. “It’s been nice to have those kind of honest conversations, even all these years later,” she said. “Isn’t it funny how things that we live with, we just kind of store away somewhere in our body? Even 20 years later, it still feels good to make amends and release them.”
After years of silence, Lenz is no longer hiding her past. She is using it to connect, to comfort, and to remind others—especially women trapped in cycles of control—that survival is possible.
