Though it’ll likely always remain a fan-favorite teen drama, One Tree Hill’s reputation has certainly diminished in part over the years, with creator Mark Schwahn having come under fire for multiple sexual assault allegations and for his alleged negative treatment of stars Bethany Joy Lenz, Hilarie Burton and more. In her new memoir, Lenz reflected on both that time of her life, as well as the decade she spent within the Big House Family cult, with comparisons made between Schwahn and her former cult leader.
Lenz’s new autobiographical release is called Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!), and hit shelves on October 22, which coincides with the One Tree Hill sequel series being developed with Burton and Sophia Bush reportedly returning. While it’s unclear if Lenz will return to the role of Haley for new stories, she did speak about her years playing the character on the O.G. series, which became more problematic due to Schwahn allegedly punishing the actors through storyline choices.
Recalling that she auditioned for the show as a faith-minded youth who wanted her character to reflect good morals, Bethany Joy Lenz says a One Tree Hill executive told her manager that the series was about “fucking and sucking,” and that she faced issues early on over a request to not have Haley wearing a bra for a scene. As she put it in the book (via Variety):
When I stood my ground as a matter of religious modesty, my manager would get a call from him: ‘She’s being difficult again. We told you what this show was about!' And, in fairness, they did. The ‘fucking and sucking’ executive had been very clear about that … But my manager was in LA and three hours behind North Carolina time, so every time I tried to get ahold of her to explain the situation and ask her to intervene, it slowed down production, which just made me look even more ‘difficult’ to everyone else.
This incident served as an example of other problems she dealt with when trying to assert her opinions and ideas, and Lenz later came to realize that the tactics Mark Schwahn used to allegedly take advantage of her were not wildly dissimilar from the patterns that were put to use by the Big House Family leader she refers to in the memoir only as "Les."
To that end, she compared the two men, saying the main difference came down to the particulars of what she had to lose by not doing as she was told, which in the case of One Tree Hill, meant dealing with non-ideal plotlines for Haley. In her words:
Now I see the similarity between the creator’s strategy and Les’s strategy. In hindsight, it became clear that they both used geography to isolate us young and trusting people from our support systems and pressure us into doing what they wanted. But whereas the creator’s only leverage was fame, Les’s leverage was my eternal salvation. The more my personal beliefs and preferences interfered with the creator’s demands, the more he started writing things into the storylines to purposefully humiliate or antagonize me. Like making other characters call Haley ‘fat.’ Or having Haley ‘overreact’ to her high school boyfriend watching porn.
At a time in which several of the show's female stars were dealing with on-set troubles, Lenz says she knew that her colleagues were talking about her cult involvement when was wasn't around, but says she was wrong about the context at the time, thinking they were being judgmental. As she put it (per Variety):
They weren’t making fun of me, and they weren’t scared of me. They sensed I was being taken advantage of and might even be in danger. They were trying to figure out how they could help me.
Thankfully, Bethany Joy Lenz made it throughout the full seven-season run of One Tree Hill intact, even if it took years to work past the transgressions of both her former work boss and her former cult leader. And while she's still booking gigs and maintaining her core fanbase, that former work boss hasn't earned any professional credits since the sexual assault allegations surfaced in 2017.
While waiting to see if the One Tree Hill sequel series will end up joining the 2025 TV schedule, fans can find Bethany Joy Lenz on Hallmark, where she hopes to reunite with former OTH co-star Jamie Lafferty for some holiday movie fun. In the meantime, One Tree Hill's entire run can be streamed with a Max subscription.