Actor Bethany Joy Lenz will tell the story of her experiences as a member of a cult in a new book, Variety reports.
Lenz first revealed on her podcast last month that she had spent a decade in a cult. She said she had been reluctant to tell people about it because she thought it might affect her career. “If everyone saw me as a victim of some kind, I’d lose my effectiveness in doing what I deeply love to do: act,” she said.
Lenz had acted in the soap opera Guiding Light and in the film Thinner before being cast as Haley James Scott in the popular teen drama show One Tree Hill, which ran from 2003 to 2012 on the WB and the CW networks.
The actor told Variety that she was a member of a cult, which she did not name, for “the entirety” of her time on One Tree Hill. She left shortly after the series ended, she said.
In her book, she said, “I’m going to put it all out there and yeah, I’ll share some of the, all the dirty details—as much as I can without causing harm … I feel like there’s so much. I just want to squeeze every ounce of help out of this experience. I want this experience to just be the fucking biggest lemon I ever had. Let me fucking squeeze out all the juice for everybody else—we’re gonna make some lemonade.”
There’s no word yet on a title or publisher for Lenz’s book.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
