Bethany Joy Lenz is in an era of reclamation. The former One Tree Hill star shot to fame in the mid-aughts playing Haley James Scott in the beloved teen soap which, despite skyrocketing her to fame, was plagued by serious issues behind the scenes. In 2021, years after members of the female cast and crew went public with allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior against showrunner Mark Schwann, she teamed up with her OTH costars Hilarie Burton Morgan and Sophia Bush to launch Drama Queens, a podcast aimed at reclaiming the show for the cast and fans. She’s also been rediscovering her artistry by starring in Hallmark films and writing and releasing original music. She even launched a newspaper covering lifestyle and art: Modern Vintage News. And now, the actor is taking back her relationship with her faith and her past in her new memoir Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!), which is being released by Simon & Schuster on October 22, 2024.
In the book, Joy opens up about being part of a high-control group she calls The Big House Family for a decade. By the time she landed her role in One Tree Hillin 2003, The Big House Family and its leader, Les, had already begun taking over her life.
'Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)' by Bethan Joy Lenz
During her time in the cult and on the show, she married her ex—identified only as “Quiet Boy” or “QB” in the book—and handed over control of her finances before leaving with her infant daughter shortly after the series ended in 2012. And though she’s mentioned her time in a cult on her podcast, she hadn’t gone public with all the details of what it was really like living in The Big House Family—until now.
“There’s something really powerful in putting things out in the open and being an open book and being honest in the good, bad, and the ugly,” Joy tells Cosmopolitan. And she really is honest about it all. The only thing off limits, she says, are her daughter and her ex-husband.
“When it comes to my daughter and her dad,” she says, “I so deeply don’t want her to be hurt.”
Anything else, she notes, is fair game. Read on to hear how Joy worked through her shame to write Dinner for Vampires, and how her OTH character Haley’s romantic ship, Naley, is part of the reason she says, “I think One Tree Hill saved me.” And then check out an exclusive excerpt—just don’t forget to preorder the book so you can read the rest of it when it’s officially out!
You’ve been journaling and writing about your experience for years. Why was now the right time to sit down and write the book?
I had the time! COVID slowed down the acting industry so much that I was able to move to Nashville and start working on another love of mine, songwriting, and give my daughter a happy life in the country. I felt that I was in a really good place to be able to write it.
In culture right now, there’s so much polarization. So many people are very reliant on their beliefs as the spine of their identity. And what I’m seeing is a pattern of relegating anyone who is different from you or believes different things than you into a subcategory. You can dehumanize them because they don’t believe in the same things or they believe something that you think is maybe harmful or hurtful. And instead of being able to hold space for another person and being open and letting your heart lead and watching how that actually transforms another person, we just…create a little cult. And this is on both sides of party lines. I see it in workplaces, even in friend groups, and it’s concerning to me.
I hope that when people read this book, one of the things they’ll be able to take away from it is how insidious groupthink is and what happens when you’re not thinking for yourself or engaging with another human being and allowing that engagement to take precedence over whatever your belief system is.
I would imagine that writing a book like this takes a lot of effort and work, especially when working through the shame that comes with being in a high-control group. In the years after you left the cult and in your experience writing this memoir, what helped you let go of that shame?
It’s not popular to talk about, but my honest answer is my relationship with God. As it shifted after I left the group, I found a much more authentic faith because I realized that I was not actually living my own life. I wasn’t having my own relationship with God. I was putting it off on other people to do it for me. When I finally got real and accepted that I couldn’t do enough to earn God’s love—I couldn’t do all the right things—the idea of shame became so much less scary. The more authentic I got with God, the more I saw that He could handle me in all of my mess, my anger, my fear, and that I was going to be okay to make mistakes. Instead of spending my life trying to control everything so that I could be a perfect person, I felt free to be a mess, which is really what I was searching for in the group all along.
When I let God into those places and said, Okay, I’ll stop trying to earn my way. I’ll just live a mess and listen to you. You know me better than I know myself, shame just started to go. And I still feel it sometimes, but I don’t live in the isolation of that shame. I’m just a human being. We’re all just fumbling our way through, and you can’t beat yourself up about it if you know you’ve got a safe place to land.
It’s so hard to let go of.
It is. It really is. I also think that shame is a false sense of humility. When I was living in shame, it kept me a victim, which kept me justified in my anger, which kept me prideful. There are so many things that shame produces that just eat away at you. And, yeah, it is really hard, but I don’t want to live in a place of feeling isolated and angry. It’s not worth it.
In the book, you write about how your affiliation with The Big House Family actually gave you courage to speak up about things you didn’t like in the show, like pushing back on Haley’s wardrobe if you found it to be too risqué. The irony of a high-control group essentially giving you a bit more control on set is fascinating.
Being part of this group, it felt like the responsibility was even bigger because I felt a sense of duty to my belief system. And so I was even more unbendable on set when it came to things that I was uncomfortable with or didn’t agree with. I was stubborn. I wasn’t willing to have much of a conversation about it with anyone because the stakes were too high. I couldn’t risk changing my mind in a conversation because it could start to deteriorate my belief system. I just put my foot down and wasn’t willing to compromise in any way, which I regret.
I look back as an older woman now, and I see so much value in the opinions of other people and in understanding instead of assuming that everyone’s against me or trying to trick me into something. I want to hear someone else’s perspective. It doesn’t mean that I have to change my mind, but I might. I’d like to go into conversations confident enough in what I believe in that I’m not going to be easily swayed. There should be no fear in listening to someone else’s opinion.
It was interesting that your personal beliefs at the time lined up so well with Haley’s big season 1 finale cliffhanger: marrying Nathan and having sex. As a teen watching, I remember thinking it was such a wild twist, but were you happy or relieved?
I thought it was great. They’re married now so they can have sex in high school and it doesn’t go against what I was trying to protect for all these young girls out there who were conflicted and feeling peer pressure. And the showrunners still got what they wanted. They still had Haley having sex in school, but at least they did it in a way that felt wholesome.
At one point, you call Nathan (James Lafferty) and Haley one of the most popular TV couples, and I totally agree. That relationship gave me so much hope as a young hopeless romantic. Was it able to provide that to you as well, even as you were going through the ups and downs of your marriage and the cult’s involvement?
I was never living in a state of transference with Nathan or romantically involved with James, but it was strange as an actor. Your body doesn’t know you’re acting. If you’re crying, you’re crying. And I was living a life nine months out of the year in a happy, loving, playful, romantic relationship that wasn’t real, but my body was living it. At the same time, I was experiencing despair and depression, no romance, a total lack of feeling seen or enjoyed. That was really difficult to reconcile. But I’m so grateful that I did have those experiences in my body of feeling loved and enjoyed and seen and romantic and all of those things because it reminded me that that part of me was still alive. It wasn’t that I was broken or couldn’t experience those things. In a way, I think that’s one of the contributing factors to why I think One Tree Hill saved me, because I was consistently able to live in a place that reminded me of who I am.
As a OTH superfan, I can’t let you go without asking you about the reboot. I know you’ve said you don’t know much about it and probably can’t tell me anything—
I wish I could give you a better answer!
But if you were to return to One Tree Hill onscreen, how would you want to receive or embrace that experience considering how hard it was on set for you during the original run of the show?
Oh man. It’s the same thing I feel every time I go back to Wilmington. I’m calling everybody from the show, seeing who’s going out where, what we’re doing. I spent 10 years missing out on things, I don’t want to miss out anymore. I really love going back and being in that environment with our cast. I miss our crew. It’s just such a great group of people. So I would want to receive it in the same way that I feel every time I go back for a convention. Just warm, welcome hugs, and so happy to be able to participate in family time.
An Excerpt From Dinner for Vampires
by Bethany Joy Lenz
Read by Bethany Joy Lenz
PROLOGUE
“I don’t want to do this anymore. Maybe we need to separate for a while.”
He was facing me when I said it, standing across the hotel room. He went quiet. Tense. I hadn’t said the word “divorce,” but it was close enough. His chest was moving in shallow breaths. He blinked a few times.
“And what about Rosie?” he said. “Who does she go with?”
Rosie. Resting on the bed between us, she rustled, still in her car seat alongside the suitcases we needed to pack for our flight back home to Idaho in a few hours. There she lay, eleven months of life and already full of turmoil. Her evenings were peppered with the sounds of her parents’ bitter arguments, slamming doors, Mom crying in closets. On top of this, it took her six months to latch on to my nipple properly because she was born with a tongue-tie, so her introduction to nourishment was a mother weeping from pain, usually screaming into a pillow so she wouldn’t be disturbed as I pushed through, bleeding into the milk. Yes, there were plenty of walks in the sunshine, naps on our chests, holding her father’s thumbs as he cooed over her and blew raspberries on her tummy. That was her favorite. He could always make her laugh by doing that. She would gaze up at us, but we were the ones who were amazed at every little thing she did. There were good times. But more often we lived in a world of chaos.
I spoke quietly: “Well . . . I mean . . . I’m nursing her, so . . .”
He shook his head and let out a quick breath, then picked up a sweatshirt, balled it up, and threw it toward me with a growl.
It was only a sweatshirt. Before that, it was only a toy. Only a book. Only a cell phone. Only potted plants. Only a vintage rolling metal laundry basket colliding with a wall, ricocheting to the floor, and scaring our tough five-pound Yorkshire terrier so badly he shit himself right where he stood. He had only injured his hand punching holes in several of our walls and doors. A sweatshirt was really nothing.
My husband’s father had encouraged his three sons from a young age to take out their aggression against women on the drywall and furniture, and he set the example himself. “Right in front of the woman, if needed,” Les would coach, “so she can see how passionate you are about her and see how controlled you are to not harm her in spite of the fact that she makes you so angry.” And boy, did I make my husband angry. Everything I did, said, thought—my very existence, it seemed.
He was especially angry with me lately, faced with moving back to Los Angeles, where we’d first met and where we’d spent these past few days looking at places to live and meeting new acting managers. Since marrying, I’d split time between our Family’s home base in Idaho and the Wilmington, North Carolina, set of the hit TV series One Tree Hill, where, for nine years, I’d starred as Haley James Scott. The millions I made supported not only us but the extended Family’s various endeavors, including a motel, a restaurant, and, most importantly, a ministry. Now that the show was over, I would have to go back to auditioning, which didn’t happen in Idaho. The idea of leaving the Family was abhorrent to him.
That afternoon in our West Hollywood hotel he had been yelling at me for about an hour, which was standard. I was exhausted.
I had been exhausted for years. The therapist I had begun seeing around this time encouraged me to create some boundaries to help navigate these emotional storms. “Start with something simple,” she’d advised. “Violence, for example. Physical violence around you is not acceptable. Ever.” After that session, I told him this: “If you throw something across the room again, I’m going to immediately remove myself and Rosie from that situation and we can try talking again the next day.”
He didn’t like it. I believe his exact words were: “I don’t agree to that.”
In the split second after he threw the sweatshirt, I had to make a choice to enforce my boundary or not. I considered letting it slide and waiting until he really threw something heavy. I didn’t want to make things worse. I could just let it go for now and we could talk about it later. I wanted to find a way to live separately for a few months, anyway. Go to counseling together and try to start over—just get away from his Family and their overbearingness for a little while. This thought tripped me up, thinking of them not just as overbearing but as his Family rather than our Family. That was a strange and surprising feeling. More surprising than the thought itself was how right it felt. But I didn’t have time to consider what that meant. I could bring all this up plus the separation idea another time if I stayed. Don’t do it now, Joy. It was only a sweatshirt.
Just then, I looked down at my daughter’s face for the first time since the fight began, and I felt everything inside me shift. Her eyes were different. They were always deep and bright like little stars had landed in them. People frequently commented laughingly that they felt she was staring into their soul. In that moment, though, her big, wonderful chocolate eyes suddenly looked hopeless, almost dead. I realized she had just sat in the room for an hour as the air filled with her father’s venom as it poured over us. Isn’t that what kills plants in fifth-grade science experiments: isolating them in a room and yelling at them?
I picked up Rosie and held her to my chest. She was limp and looked so deeply sad. Maybe I was projecting. Maybe it was all in my imagination. Maybe God was present, like I’d known Him to be many times before, and He was somehow allowing me to see myself from a bird’s-eye view. Whatever it was, my body went cold. And then it went very, very hot.
I had carried her for nine months, I had read the books on parenthood, I had delivered her myself after a twenty-hour labor, reaching down and pulling my daughter out of myself in the final moment. I nursed multiple times a day through the pain of her inability to latch. I got up in the night with her and then went to work at five a.m. with her. I prayed for her, fed her, changed her, took her to her doctor’s appointments, spoke positive things over her daily—I did all the things mothers do. I think in that moment, though—seeing her light go out, knowing why, and knowing I was the only one who could do anything about it—that was the moment I actually became a mother. And that stupid sweatshirt became the heaviest thing he ever threw.
I began to gather my things. “I told you if you threw another thing I was going to leave with her for the night.” I stated it pragmatically, holding a thread of hope that he might apologize.
I didn’t even notice him move. He just was suddenly there. Over me, leaning in as I sat on the bed, his arms blocking me on either side, his breath hot in my face.
“If you leave,” he spat, “I will get a lawyer and I will take her from you. I will fight for custody and I’ll win. I will take. Her. Away from you.”
My heart was a kick drum. He was so confident the girl he knew wouldn’t leave. The girl he knew would stay because, in spite of the endless struggle and depression, she hadn’t left. The girl he knew was committed to making the marriage work. She was trying to be a Godly, submissive wife. She knew she was selfish and just needed more healing—needed to surrender more. She knew, deep down, how much he’d sacrificed for her, how patient he was with her brokenness. The girl he knew needed him.
I knew that girl, too. I’d been living in her skin for ten years believing she was the real me. But where was the girl I used to be before? Before the downward spiral into normalizing abuse and handing over my autonomy not just to him but to our Family— no, to his Family. No, to a . . . to a . . . I wasn’t quite ready to admit it. I was even more reluctant to use that word than “divorce.” The word my estranged parents and former friends and coworkers had been using for years. The word that further isolated me from them but that I increasingly suspected was true.
He stood up, still glowering at me, then walked into the bathroom, slammed the door, and turned on the shower. I was lucky that he bet on me being paralyzed with fear, but I knew my window of time was short. I quickly scooped up Rosie in her car seat, grabbed my suitcase, and hurried to the rental car. Instead of driving to the airport, I let him take the flight home without us while Rosie and I crashed with a few old friends for the next week. Via text, he pleaded, then doubled down on scolding me for my insubordination, my selfishness, my heartlessness. Again, standard. And then he went cold. His messages became almost robotic, which only pushed me further away.
After a week with those old friends and phone calls with my therapist and parents, I was reminded of that other girl I used to be before. I was reminded I still was her, and finally I reached a place where I could say it.
I was in a cult. And I had to get out.
Excerpted from DINNER FOR VAMPIRES: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) by Bethany Joy Lenz. Copyright 2024 © by Bethany Joy Lenz. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC
Copyright © 2024 by Bethany Joy Lenz. Audio excerpt courtesy of Simon & Schuster Audio from the audiobook DINNER FOR VAMPIRES by Bethany Joy Lenz, read by the author, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Used with permission from Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While Also in an Actual Cult!), by Rachel Harrison will be released on September 10, 2024. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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