'One Tree Hill' star Bethany Joy Lenz' co-stars attempted to 'rescue' her from cult: ‘I was really committed’

foxnews.com:

Bethany Joy Lenz' "One Tree Hill" co-stars attempted to "rescue" her from the cult she was a part of for 10 years and the alleged "spiritual abuse" she faced. "It was open with them.

It was the whisper behind the scenes, like, 'You know, she’s in a cult,'" Lenz told Variety in a new interview. "For a while, they were all trying to save me and rescue me, which is lovely and so amazing to be cared about in that way." "But I was very stubborn," she noted. "I was really committed to what I believed were the best choices I could make." "The nature of a group like that is isolation; they have to make you distrust everyone around you so that the only people you trust are, first and foremost, the leadership and then, people within the group if the leadership approves of them, and isn’t in the middle of pitting you against each other, which happens all the time also," the actress explained. "It built a deep wedge of distrust between me and my cast and crew.

As much as I loved them and cared about them, there was a fundamental thought: If I’m in pain, if I’m suffering, I can’t go to any of these people.

So you feel incredibly lonely." Lenz fully believes that filming "One Tree Hill" ultimately saved her.The drama series filmed from 2003 until 2011. "I was there nine months out of the year in North Carolina," she explained. "I had a lot of flying back and forth, a lot of people visiting and things like that, but my life was really built in North Carolina.