One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz reveals tragic question she asked after finally leaving 'cult'

Adapting to normality after spending a decade in a 'cult' was something that Bethany Joy Lenz never underestimated.

But after realising the error in her ways following some controversial religious group practices, and attempting to get her life back on track, there was one heartbreaking question that the One Tree Hill star was desperate to have answered.

At 20 years old, noughties television actress Lenz fell in with a small group of Christian devotees, fronted by an Idaho pastor.

She was with them throughout the filming of OTH, and while working as both a solo artist and a member of the folk music band Everly.

Eventually, however, after spending several years with the group, Lenz endured what she has since described as a 'rude awakening', realising that the extreme control that 'cult' had over her life, body and finances were far from healthy.

It wasn't until 2023, however, that she broke the news of her involvement to the public - insisting during an episode of her Drama Queens podcast that she didn't realise at the time that the group aligned with the definition of a 'cult'.

Now, 43, in another interview, the TV star looked back at what ultimately prompted her decision to leave.

Speaking to Patrick Custer on the Rooted Recovery Stories podcast, she began: "It's like if I had been brought up in an environment where everything was laid out for me, I did everything everybody told me to do.

"I dressed perfectly, I showed up everywhere, I knew all the right things to say, and I found myself all of a sudden in the middle of my life going, 'I don't even know who I am.'"

Lenz found her departure from the group a bittersweet pill to swallow, however, revealing she was left with one rather daunting question.

"Everything around me is a set," she said. "It's all paper mache. And how do I just go back to the beginning?"

Lenz went on to reveal that she spent several weeks living in her car, all the which trying to remember how she'd acted prior to 'cult' life.

"I'm going to show up every day for myself, for the people I know," she recalled. "I'm going to peel off the costume, take off the makeup and just start from scratch and figure out who I am.

"How do I like my eggs? What music do I listen to? How do I want to communicate with people? How do I like to be communicated with?

"I mean, it was back to bare, bare, bare bones of reconstructing, like, who am I?"

It's only since leaving the group has Lenz lifted the lid on some of the controversial practices that spurred the decision.

In an interview with Good Morning America in October last year - following the release of her tell-all memoir, she revealed that the prime reason was for her daughter, Rosie, who she welcomed with the group leader's son, musician Michael Galeotti.

"I left because of my daughter," she claimed. "I left because it was time.

"I remember having this thought, I said, 'I don’t know what’s wrong with me and why I will allow myself to be treated this way, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to allow this to happen to her. We gotta get out.'"

Lenz has also opened up about an alleged 'sex schedule' that was prescribed to her by 'cult leaders' at the time, and said her OTH co-stars frequently tried to open her eyes to the reality that she was being controlled.

She recounted that she ‘could see it on their faces’ but she would ‘justify it, like, “I couldn't possibly be in a cult. It's just that I've got access to a relationship with God and people in a way that everybody else wants, but they don't know how to get it”'.