Bethany Joy Lenz - One Tree Hill, a Secret Cult, and Living a Double Life - Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Or if you've had experience with manipulation or abusive power
that you'd like to share.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Leave us a message on our hotline number at three
four seven eight six trust.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's three four seven eight six eight seven eight seven eight.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Or showed us an email at trust Me pod at
gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Trust me, trust for trust me.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
I'm like a squat person.

Speaker 4 (00:25):
I've never lived. To you, I've never had a live.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't welcome and to trust Me. The podcast about cults,
extreme belief and manipulation from two actual former cult members
who've actually experienced it. I am Lola Blanc.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
And I'm Megan Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
And today our guest is incredible actor, musician, and now
author Bethany Joy Lenz, whom we're just gonna call Joy.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
So.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Joy was the star of hit TV show you may
have seen, One Tree Hill, and today she's going to
talk to us about how she was in a Christian
cult the entire time she was filming the show. She's
going to tell us about her upbringing and her career
as a young actor living in La on her own
and joining a small Bible study group that seemed like
the perfect place to share a community with like minded
young Christian actors, And how a charismatic preacher named Les

(01:10):
began showing up, leading the meetings and changing everything.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
She'll tell us about going to a house in Idaho
they called the God Spa, how she was dragged at
the house but did not realize until later, And how
Les began to exert more and more control over her life,
including isolating her from her family and taking over her finances,
which were being drained without her knowledge the entire time
she was working on a hit television show, and how

(01:34):
the groups hold over her led her to turning down
her dream role and her dream Broadway play. That part
was really hard to read. This book is great.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
It's a really really good book. Plus how she discovered
her money was gone and finally decided.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
To leave the name of the book is Dinner for
Vampire's life on a cult TV show while also in
an actual cult great.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yes, it is so good and she is so incredible
to talk to. And before we before we delve, Delve, Delve,
before we delve, Yeah, it was cute Into Joy's life Megan. Okay,
it's election day today. As we're recording this, Tomorrow is
going to be crazy. We don't know what's going to happen. No,

(02:15):
But since we don't know what's going to happen yet,
let's talk about something that's not the election. Okay, So
what is your cultius thing of the week?

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Well, she said something in her book that really stood
out to me. She made us seem so simple. She said,
high demand is a motivator. Success is a drug, and
before you know it, you're rationalizing anything in order to
meet the demand and get your high. The demand has
become your god. And this, to me was the perfect
example of how really smart people and really driven people

(02:48):
often find themselves in cults other than what we typically
think of as a like dumb cult member blah blah
blah blah blah. Like it's it just reframed the high
achiever that a lot of these groups. Straw and let
me read a little something from the book. And she's
speaking about cultureight now, not her career.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
She says.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
One of the reasons she someone like her is a
prime target while she has intelligent is because intelligent and
ambitious people want to be challenged and someone having high
expectations of you is a turn on high demand as
a motivator, success as a drug, and before you know it,
you're rationalizing anything in order to meet the demand and
get your high. The demand has become your God very

(03:30):
whiplash almost, But you just see how these very very smart, compelling,
highly driven people who you don't think of normally being
the people who get drawn into cults really are a
lot of what we see on the show. So I
don't know, I thought that was a really cool way
of putting it.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, that is so true, and that's so interesting. It's like,
you know, we talk a lot about how people who
are curious end up in cults because they're just open
and want to explore. But it is true that like
for high achievers, like a value placed in overcoming an
obstacle or learning how to do something, or you know,
like doing something difficult, and what's more difficult than being

(04:09):
in occult with a never ending moving goalpost what your
you can never quite get there? I mean that totally
makes sense to me. I love that.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
I always come back to like Nexium and not Frame,
you know, because they were really giving a lot of
high achieving people really difficult tasks that just kept them
very wrapped up and not realizing that they were an act.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah. I think that's certainly what appealed to someone like me,
if wrapped in the right you know, wrapping where if
it was, if it was if it was appealing to
my particular sensibilities, you know, like as I think Nexium
would if I were in the.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
No, no, no, I can see you in Exiom.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Wellow, so you know that's my group. Yeah, I see
you in it. I'm in Heaven's Gate. Okay, Yeah, you're
in Heavens Gate. Yeah, I'm for sure in Heaven's Gate. Okay,
But what about what about you? What's your cultiest thing
of the week?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Michael, tiest thing is is nice and light and it's
not actually very culty, but it's just that I went
to Okay, so there's I go to a lot of
film festivals. I go to a lot of horror film
festivals because for those of you who do not know,
I'm a director as well as a music artist. But
so this is my fifth year of doing like the
festival circuit, and it's my fifth year going back to
this one called film Quest. Shout out because I know

(05:17):
a lot of people go to film Quest listen to
this podcast, and it's like just such a wonderful community.
It's like a totally unpretentious, loving, welcoming community of like
genre filmmakers, which is something you just don't get that
often as a director because a lot of film festivals
are trying to be prestigious. They're trying to be make

(05:40):
you feel like you're cool if you get in, so
then you know, the attitude there is like a little exclusive,
and this is just completely the opposite of that. And
I think everyone there is like genuinely just loves horror
and like loves hanging out with horror people and a
bunch of world It's like a bunch of nerds. So
it's totally harmless. But all I'm saying is that like
if someone at a festival like foam Quest decided to

(06:03):
start turning it into a cult, this would be the
one that I would join, because I'm like, oh, these
people are so nice, They're so supportive, they love what
I make. This feels so nice. I don't get appreciated
anywhere else like this, you know.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
Yeah, And therein lies.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
The rub is that those spaces exist. People love it
and then a predator sees it and thinks yay and
kind of goes in and takes over. So you might
still have that opportunity. Somebody might start a call off
of it, and I'll have to rescue you from it.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Fortunately, I think Jonathan, who runs the festival, is pretty chill,
so I think we're okay. But it's true, like you
have a great space like that, and this episode is
actually a great example of that. You have a space
that is just harmless people having community together and then
someone comes in and then everything changes. And is that
the perfect segue into our interview, is it?

Speaker 1 (06:54):
I think it might be. Let's talk to Joy.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
Let's do it.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Welcome Joy to trust me. Thank you so much for
being here in person with us. So great to have you.
There's so much we have to talk to you about.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
Thank you guys for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to
dive in.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Start us at the very beginning, Like tell us about
your upbringing, what was your family life like, and what
role did faith play in your life?

Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah, we'll give you the reader's digest version. I was
the only child. My parents got married and they were
really young, you know, twenty two I think is when
my mom had me, and they didn't have much money,
and they were just really struggling through life in a
lot of ways. And there was also a long lineage
of codependence and addiction in my family too, and so
there were, you know, just young kids trying to figure

(07:44):
it out. And they had this strong faith Christian faith
that they grew up in the seventies is that sort
of Jesus Revolution moment, and you know, really wonderful, loving people,
but moved around a lot, and I felt pretty isolated
as a kid because I was just always we were
always bound and around from house to house following whatever
jobs my parents were picking up in different places. And

(08:05):
other than my cocker spaniel, Jesus was my best friend.
And so you know, I was sweet and I really
like fell into it or walked or I don't know,
I wandered into this space of faith. Actually I made
a deliberate choice. When I was seven. I remember having
this really like overwhelming awareness of my humanity in a

(08:26):
way that seven year olds don't like now that I'm
older and I look back and I have a daughter,
and when she was seven, I'm like, how did I
have this comprehend this like existential comprehension of life. When
I was seven years old enough to decide that, like,
this was the path of faith, I wanted to choose,
but I did, and so I followed that, And I
really always tended to my relationship with God and in
the ways that I knew how based on the exposure

(08:48):
that I was given. And then when I got older,
moved to New York City and started really pursuing my
faith journey on my own without my parents. But I
did feel really lated as a child that did really
long for family. I really wanted a place to belong
and that was probably my core wound that you know,
led us into everything that we're going to talk about here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, family is a recurring theme in your book, which
we both devoured. By the way, it's so very good.
I finished it in a night and a morning. It
is very interesting. I feel like we hear a lot
of stories about people who were raised religious and that
was sort of their path into a cult. And I'm
so happy to be talking to you today because you
really lay out the process of indoctrination on a young

(09:32):
but adult mind. Yeah, in a way that it can
be kind of hard for people to wrap their heads around,
like so much of it is like, oh, I was
born into it, my parents led me into it, yeah,
or I don't know that it can be talked about
in a very clinical way, but I feel like I
was really with you emotionally every step of like how
you were indoctrinated by this man who we will talk.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
About, Oh we sure well, Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
And just like so people kind of understand where you
were at professionally at this time. I'm like, what was
happening for you in your acting career when you first
met the group.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
I had been doing really well as an actor. I
started working professionally when I was about twelve after doing
years of musical theater, and then started as I continued
in my musical theater career, I was also doing commercials
and pilots. And I got Stephen King's Thinner, a big
movie when I was fourteen, and that was a big deal.
And then I was getting a lot of pilots in
LA and I had shot two years on The Guiding

(10:25):
Light on CBS. There were lots of actors on that
show that you know, full circle I came to know
years later, and who came on One Tree Hill? And
I mean It's just a really cool career trajectory. And
I had not yet booked One Tree Hill when I
started attending this home group Bible study thing, but it

(10:45):
was coming up quickly and there were a lot of
other irons in the fire. And I had been doing
guest spots on like Felicity and Charmed. I mean, so
this is big.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
You have a career working actor. It is working. And
how old were you when you met?

Speaker 4 (10:59):
I was twenty baby.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yeah, so originally who was in the group and how
are you brought into it?

Speaker 4 (11:07):
So my roommate at the time when I moved to LA,
I didn't know many people. I had a very small
group of friends that I had known peripherally. Some people
were just visitors from New York, like people I had
known when I was living in New York that were
living in LA and visited me, And then some were
people who lived out there. But I was a small group.
And then my roommate invited me to come to Bible

(11:29):
study with her and I needed it. Like nine to
eleven had just happened. I just left New York. That
was I grew up in Jersey and New York. I
was in the city every day every other day since
I was twelve years old. Then I moved to the
city and lived there, and I felt like so much
of a New Yorker that when I was in LA
and woke up to nine to eleven, which I write

(11:49):
about in Dinner for Vampires, I was just so desperate
for community, Like I can't believe the community that I
love and that I miss. I want to be there
and be a part of it and how and contribute,
and like, do I get on a plane? There's no
planes flying, how do I get? Like what do I do?
And it really I felt even more isolated. And then
my roommate said, hey, you know, I know a couple

(12:10):
of guys that are doing this Bible study and I
think you should come with us come over.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
And at first it was pretty chill, was great.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
And all, yeah, yeah, totally the same thing I've been
grown up in, in that Protestant charismatic non denominational thing
where there's no for listeners who don't know what non
denominational is, it's basically Christianity without any of the former
philosophers like Calvin or Luther or you know, there's no.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Old school structure.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
It's like we don't want to be bound by the
rules of whatever. John Calvin thought, you know whatever, These
guys thought, we want to just like kind of free
wheel it and let the spirit bring interpretations. And so
for me, going to this Bible study felt very just
felt very normal, like this, I'm so used to this.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
And it was other actors, right, Yeah, there were.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
A lot of other young professionals, young industry profess which
kind of gave it cloud because oh, okay, this isn't
just random people meeting in the valley.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
These sounds like a few of them are kind of
cute too.

Speaker 4 (13:08):
Yeah, that definitely helps, Yeah, it would go.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, also artists like creative people and successful.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
And successful artists, and so there's also this sense of
liberalism in a lot of these Christian artistic circles, where
it's like, yeah, we believe in Jesus, but also like
gay people should be able to get married, and like
I'm not. You know, there's this sort of social libertarianism
I think in a lot of these circles. And so
for artists, you want to be around people who share
your faith but who aren't scared of your art too.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Right, Yeah, I mean, of course that would feel like
an appropriate community for you. Yeah, and it sounds like
it was actually in the beginning. Yeah, can you tell
us who was was and why that was? Like that
first meeting?

Speaker 4 (13:52):
Yeah, less what's pastor from another state who came in
and he was without a church at the time. He
was someone that the guys who were running the home
group Bible study in LA had met when they went
home to Idaho to I don't know, hang out with
their family. They're from Idaho, so they I guess they
just visited a church. And when his church fell apart

(14:14):
or he left it, you know, it's all very vague
at the time. Of course I found out later and
that's also in the book. But when he left his church,
then he got into a space of connecting with us
on a more of a regular basis, coming down to La, visiting,
checking in with us. Just it was a real slow
burn transition.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
What did he look like?

Speaker 4 (14:34):
What was his vibe? He's a man in his mid
to late forties. You know, he was really charismatic in
a non car salesmany kind of way. You know, what's
interesting about actors getting sucked in by this guy is
like actors are professional bullshit detectors. That's what we're supposed
to be able to do now. We were all very young,
and so there's a longevity in your career that sometimes

(14:57):
it takes to really learn how to do that effectively.
But you should be able to drop into a moment
in a scene and know whether the other person that
you're doing a scene with is being authentic or whether
they're acting. And if they're acting, the scene doesn't go
very well, it's really hard to respond and play off
of them. And he was so authentic and so dropped
into his body and so like not creepy and not

(15:19):
like it just he just seemed like a sweet dad
figure kind of guy who was just nice to everybody
and really like self effacing, made fun of himself all
the time. It was really just kind of like like
so unassuming, so unassuming, and you think, oh, that's so humble,
and you know, again, we were in our early twenties.
You have the life experience. You put it somewhere.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
I can't find exactly how you said it, but it
was like he was really good at saying bold, huge
things in a very small, like right off way that
you're just like, oh, what, that's so simple and like
true and I feel like that's really dangerous.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
That's the bullshit detector thing, right if somebody comes in
and they say something really bold and then they say
it in a way that is like a big deal,
and you need to pay at performance, and as an actor,
you're like, you're performing. I know, I leave you. Yeah,
So yeah he was. I don't know if he was smarter,
if he just really, like any good sociopath, believed his
own bullshit. I don't know. That's always the question that about.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
We got down to ye, how did his involvement in
this otherwise innocuous Bible study group grow? And how did
he become a bigger part of your life?

Speaker 4 (16:24):
He became a bigger part of my life just as
the group went on. You know, I got one tree Hill,
and he was over the course of the year when
I was going to the group and he was coming,
and then I started booking all these jobs and then
I got one tree Hill. It took about a year,
and he was, you know, as I said, checking in
with us. We were all just kind of doing life together,
which that was like the buzzword doing life together, Oh wow,

(16:47):
and which you also hear in a lot of Christian
churches that's a very this is our tribe, your you know,
chosen family, and he really invested and as a young
person and for a lot of us in the group
that were missing a father figure connection that was emotionally available,
Like I love my dad. We were always very close,

(17:08):
but it was a very cerebral relationship. He taught me
so much about critical thinking, and even though I didn't
know how to put into practice when I was twenty,
I think it really helped get me out and.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
On the other side.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
But the emotional availability was something I was really longing
for and less filled that void for me and a
lot of other people in the group.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
He was so smart to call it your bio family
and then your spiritual family.

Speaker 4 (17:33):
And then there's so many parallels to me with this
with the Sarah Lawrence, but.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
The college Sarah. Yeah, the man who sort of like
a little cult there, Sarah Lawrence my father, someone's father.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
He's very like I used to be in the Army,
emotionally available to everybody who.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
Is kind of vulnerable, and like it just so annoying
now as an older woman with a daughter who's gotten
out of all this, Like it's so annoying for the
men who are really just good guys that want to
invest and care about the youth and the young generation
that they've got to contend with being.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Like well, like, there's only two kinds of people that
are interested in helping kids, creepy people and the best people.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeah, and the creepy people can look like the best.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Ye, it's very difficult to do.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
I want to talk about some of the conversations that
he started to have with you, guys that were shutting
off your critical thinking or like teaching you to show
off your critical thinking. There was the like don't get
mad at him, love the negativity out of him conversations.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
Tell us about that, Yeah, that's one of the first
conversations that I remember. Things really shifting, And I write
about this in the book is a Night at Bible Study,
and the topic comes up of speaking the truth quote
unquote the truth into someone. Right. So, if you were
someone who was constantly complaining about always as your friend,

(19:03):
instead of coming to you and saying, can I be
honest with you? You complain a lot, and it's hard
to be around you. I love you, but like that's
really tough. Instead of being honest and direct, which I
think would be the healthy way, of doing that in
a safe zone, as in friendship. The encouragement for us
was we only speak the truth. So you go to

(19:24):
someone who's.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Really complaining, truths in air quotes.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Truth is in air quotes. You go to your friend
who's complaining all the time, and you say, you are
just the most grateful person I've ever met, Like, you
appreciate all the little things in life, and it is
such a joy to be around you.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
I've honestly, in different self help groups have heard the
same thing, yes, and have been like, that makes sense
to me, because sometimes they are a little bit grateful
and I'll just like poke on that and help them
expand it.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
Yeah, but there's something to the idea of positive reinforce.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Sure, but you're also going over your conscious mind and yes,
like lying to yourself end to them.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, there's nothing wrong here. Actually I love this quality
about them.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yes, that's it.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
It's the slow rewiring of your neural pathways to believe
something that is not true. And you, as you can see,
it got way worse than much more. He was much
more emboldened as the story goes on, But in the beginning,
you have to do that with something super normal like
you say you read this in self help books. It's
in the Bible to Spino speak truth about people in

(20:29):
those ways. There's like a whole section about how that
was justified that night in the group, and it was
really the beginning of the whole slow burn. Just dropping
that in and see how people respond. How does everybody
respond to this? Is there anybody getting a red flag? Like, well,
I don't know if this is really the way we
should do it. The people who have really had the

(20:50):
red flags about that, you'll see how he interacted with
them as the story goes on. And the people who
were just blindly like me, who was like I love that, Like,
I love that idea. I would love to just encourage
people and not have to think about the things in
people that I don't like.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Like, blindly implies some sort of inherent I don't know.
I guess you were naive, but you also just cared
a lot. You just yeah, you're wired about life and
you just wanted to be good.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, I was empathetic, like I wanted to be a
better person.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
But like I always find it interesting when the leaders
start turning up the heat and seeing who kind of
falls away. Yeah, and they want those people to fall right,
and that that's scary, no.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
Room for doubt. So people who are going to be
sowing in seats of doubt to any of the other people,
they gotta go.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
I see in the cl I was raised and like
they're kind of raising the heat and weird areas to
I think, get rid of people who are, yes, not
going to start stirring.

Speaker 4 (21:50):
And I saw it happen. I mean we were the
group was like between fifteen and twenty people at any
given and not not usually all at one time, but
any given time throughout that year, and a lot of them,
I mean probably half the people who were there at
the beginning fell off by the time he was really
had had seated himself as the leader.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
I mean, if you don't want to be subjected to
criticism or have anyone check your power at any point,
it's a very smart thing to do.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
Yeah, you got assess them out.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I also just wanted to mention that you also wrote
about how you talk about how there was an enemy,
the enemy was going to launch at tax on the group.
Did that raise red flags for you at all?

Speaker 4 (22:29):
That's total charismatic language. That's that's very common. I actually
I think that's probably a most Christian.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Geno is just like evangelical. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot
of that. Yeah, so it just resonated. It just felt
like what you had always kind of heard.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah, it did. It did.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
And it's just another word for darkness or you know,
if you're if you're a different religion, there's like there's
light and dark. If it's if you talk about the
universe and you don't subscribe to a particular god believe,
then there's yang.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, yeah, I believe that.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
You know, it's just a lingo. So to me, it
didn't that didn't throw me off.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Okay, I feel like you said something that there was
this idea that they were going to launch attacks on
the group, and that was just a sign that you
were doing the right thing.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
Yeah, for sure. Because the idea is there's a physical
realm and there's a spirit realm. So there are things
that are going on that we can't see in the
non physical world. There's a battle between light and dark,
and if you're doing good things in the world, there
is a spotlight on you in the dark spiritual realm

(23:36):
because it sees what you're doing and wants to stop it.
And so then there would be uh, spiritual attacks headed
in your direction specifically because you're making so many, so
many efforts.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
To do When we had that, I would get warnings
as a kid about how like i'd wake up and
see demons if I had been sinning oh my God
too much, or if like you are on the right
righteous path, like the Satan's going to try.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
To I feel like that's true when whenever I start
to get a better habit or something, there seems to
be a million things that come.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
Up to like fight against it.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
It's just I feel like it's like a resistance thing.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Not a spiritual thing. Yeah, I mean that's it's age old.
What's who said that quote that it's a fucking kaiser?
So say, right, like in the Usual Suspects, the greatest
trick the devil ever pulled was making the world believe
it didn't exist or he didn't exist.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Right right right before.

Speaker 4 (24:26):
Yeah, So yeah, this is this is an age old
philosophical theological theory, and it's it's morphed and used and
weaponized in many different ways in many different religions and
cultures as well. But yeah, it does it. So it
didn't throw me off because I was just like, oh, well, yeah,
that does make sense. It's the same thing you're talking

(24:48):
about when i've oh, I've gotten doing really well in
my new workout art, I got mono.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
But it still is priming the way he's using his language.
It's priming, y'all. Yeah, to think of anyone who disagreed
with him or question timor criticized him. That's the enemy.

Speaker 4 (25:05):
Yes, that's how it was weaponized. And what was really
brilliant about the way he did it was that he
wouldn't label that person. It's not like scientology where they'll
say that's a suppressive person, and you can clearly identify
that that person has been labeled. What he would do
is say, we love that person, like I love that person.
That's a really great person, but they're not spiritually mature,

(25:28):
and so the enemy is using them to attack us.
So you have to be careful when you're talking to
that person. You can still be loving, but be careful
because the enemy is working through them.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Damn he's good, right, good sonipulative?

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Oh my god?

Speaker 2 (25:46):
All right, So you end up in Idaho for the
first time.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Tell us about this retreat.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yes, yes, I had gone through a major heartbreak.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
I was invited by the female leader of the group,
who was the mother of the two boys who had
started it, and she and Less had become really chummy.
She had a lot of skills financially, and she was
also stepped in as the as the mother for a
lot of the young girls that had this warm and

(26:14):
patience that I didn't experience from my own mother because
of our just mother daughter, you know, conflict in our relationship.
So here comes Pam and she's just so loving and sweet,
and it's like, why don't you come up to Idaho
and come stay in our little God spots? Just so peaceful,
the God spot, and you can be whoever you want

(26:35):
to be. There's no expectations of you.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Well, plane ticket is booked on my end. I get
away from this heartbreak. So ideal like little Space as a.

Speaker 4 (26:44):
Specific Northwest Yeah, the trees and right sound house, and
there's all these loving people who just want to They
give you your space. If you don't want to talk,
nobody wants you don't have to talk. If you want
to go wander around, there's no obligation at all. And
I was shocked. I'd never been in an environment like
that where there was no obligation, there's no social especially

(27:07):
as somebody who's nero divergent. I always felt so awkward
in social scenarios and like, what do I do? What
am I supposed to do here? And how do I
behave and perform in order to make everybody feel like
I'm normal so that it's all okay? But you know,
I felt constantly misunderstood as a kid and a teenager,
constantly thought of as just like a real weirdo and

(27:29):
an outcast. And I was always trying to just put
myself in this package of like I'm normal, I'm normal,
it's not weird at all.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
I always have to go back to the fact that
Lola tried to sell her soul to the Devil for friends.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
And I was Norman, so that was like a big deal.

Speaker 4 (27:49):
You were rebelling.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
I just wanted friend so bad. I wasn't even I
was like, God didn't do it for me, so Satan
will right?

Speaker 4 (27:57):
Yeah, oh my gosh, ohays on a real level.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
That just breaks my heart, but also kind of I
did eventually get friends, so Satan did answer my prayers.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
Oh my God, And do you still have a soul?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
I think so.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
Part one just.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Like being lonely as a teenager, also neurodiversion. It's all
like my special interest was Sweet Valley High. So I
just like Sweet Valley High. You know, you're lonely and
when people are giving you these very loving, very accepting
just like we don't even have to.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Chat, just accessor you want to be weird, I say,
the weird going your thinking walks.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah thinking.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
So you're like good chill.

Speaker 4 (28:38):
Yeah, I loved it.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I have to ask about the cough syrup, which is
just really horrifying. Yeah, you were given coughs eyuupe by
a man who was there.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
Yeah, it's funny how little of it I remember. It's
like these flashes of getting there. I was sick. I
remember being given a bottle of coughs urah, and I
was really hacking a lot, and I was just like, Okay,
it's fine, I'll just take this and go to bed.
And I woke up and it was two days later,

(29:13):
and I had just been out and I didn't remember
taking more than like a spoonful of it. But one
of the men in the house, who's also living in
the house with these other girls, was someone who had
a history of medicating young women, which you do not

(29:34):
know that at the time. I know I didn't know
at the time, and that all it got explained later
in the book. But there also was a doctor and
his wife involved in the group, and so I don't
know if he wrote the prescripture. I mean, like I
don't know where at all, like how all these things came.
But anyway, I just actually talked with a girlfriend of

(29:55):
mine who I didn't There's so many things I just
didn't have time to put in the book, like you
got to keep the story moving. But she was someone
who'd been involved with one of the members of the group,
and she had a single she was a single mom
with a little girl, and she was in another country
and Less encouraged her to leave the country and move

(30:17):
to Idaho with her daughter, and she was like, well,
I can't because I'm in the middle of like custody stuff,
so if I leave, that's technically kidnapping. And he was like,
just let God deal with that, don't worry about it, Like,
you just leave and do what you need to do
that's right for you and your child, and God will
handle the legal stuff. And she voice texted me a

(30:37):
couple days ago and said, you know what's so crazy,
joy I remember when I got to Idaho. She didn't
end up doing that, but she had come to visit.
She said, when I got to Idaho, I wasn't given
coughs her up, but I was given pills. And I
remember being repeatedly given pills to just like relax me,
call my anxiety. I was like, oh my god, I

(30:58):
didn't even know that when I was writing the book.
I just found out the other day. You know, it's
like you're constantly uncovering. I don't know if that was
like that was the experience for you guys too, If
you're constantly just covering things every time it goes every.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Day you wake up to like a new level where
you're like, I thought I had a grasp on it,
but it's crazier.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
It's a new information from people that you haven't talked
to in a while or whatever. Yeah. Scary, yeah, so scary, yeah, terrifying.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
Like that whole first like week of you being there,
I felt like I was reading a horror movie. It's like,
what the what the other shoe is going to drop?

Speaker 4 (31:28):
Like what is going to happen?

Speaker 2 (31:39):
How did it start to become more just like actually
controlling your life.

Speaker 4 (31:44):
The control had started a long time ago, and what
the training was with the grooming was, really, I should say,
is it's teaching me how to brainwash myself. I don't
love the word brainwash. I've said that before. I don't
know what an alternative is other than rewiring your neural pathways,
which is technically what it is. But it's all the

(32:05):
stuff that you see every time you want to open
Instagram and somebody's telling you how to self motivate, and
the things that you want to say to yourself in
the mirror that your therapist tells you, like rewrite your
narrative and say these things about yourself over and over
again until you believe them. It's not a crazy idea,
it's just it gets really, really unhealthy in this kind
of context. So the control started with those slow like

(32:30):
dropping those little things of here's how you think about
other people, here's the kinds of ways that you can
set boundaries and protect yourself from people who are being
used by the enemy. Here's ways that you can release
yourself from any doubt you might be having about your faith,
about your identity, and just tell yourself these things over

(32:52):
and over and over again. I was taught to just
train myself so that the leadership didn't have to do
it all the time.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
I think, just on that theme of family too, I mean,
I think one of the important droplets was Pam kind
of stepping in as your mom and kind of overstepping
your mom's place and things like your birthday and.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Oh yes, can you tell us about the birthday?

Speaker 4 (33:12):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's that's one of the hardest chapters
in the book because my sweet mom, well sweet maybe
is not the right word. My tough, smart, very loving mom.
She came to my birthday party, my twenty first birthday party,
and you know, she really wanted to be open minded

(33:35):
and accepting and loving and like, okay, there's another woman
who could be a mentor to my daughter in La
and she loves God and she's really kind, and she
knows the entertainment industry because her one of her sons
is in it, like okay, and she came in really
like open hearted. And Pam so clearly was very possessive

(33:59):
over me, very dismissive of my mom as my mother,
just very like you don't really matter, You've kind of
fucked up your daughter, and I'm here to fix it.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Yeah, just asserting dominance like this is kind of my daughter.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Yeah. Sorry, yeah, she was like just pissing all over it.
You know. Yeah, dude, I was.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
I was so mad.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
I'm reading the reading that chapter. Yeah yeah, for you
and for your mom. Yeah yeah Pam, what a what
a lady. But but that was But that is also
like such an important like piece of how you were
becoming indoctrinated is like taking the role of your parents
over basically saying we are your family. You listen to us.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Yes, he calls you baby, Yeah, sorry, enough to do,
don't what?

Speaker 4 (34:44):
Oh, daddy calls everybody baby?

Speaker 1 (34:47):
So creepy say it again, because I couldn't hear.

Speaker 4 (34:50):
I couldn't understand how he was saying. It was a baby.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
Oh, like you're like baby.

Speaker 4 (34:54):
Yeah, it was like come here, baby, Ah, so proud
of you baby.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Oh. I know.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
But if it's not, if it doesn't sound prefer it
sounds sexual, then yeah, I'm a baby. Thank you, tak me.
I know.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
But even that, you.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Well, hindsight, but like in the you know, in the moment,
it's like, oh, another father.

Speaker 4 (35:15):
Figure, Oh for sure, for sure.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
I mean I just want someone to cradle me and
like tell me I'm I'm a good person. So totally, totally,
totally understand.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Can you tell us a little bit about what covenant
relationship is and how he was kind of forming it
as a family.

Speaker 4 (35:31):
Yeah, that one was. That one was also a lingo
that I was super familiar with the idea of covenant is.
I mean, it's like this, it's a very I want
to say the word it's a biblical thing, but it
might have been something that was a part of society
even before that time. But it's, uh, it's a word
of old, concept of old. Yes, you make a promise

(35:55):
with someone. I think in the Bible, you know, Abraham
makes his promise with God. He cuts the ram into
and God's like I'm going to pass through it. Usually
both people would pass through both sides, and it's like
this very sacred promise. Like if basically you're saying, if
I don't keep my end of this contract, this deal
may what happened to this ram that happened to me.

(36:17):
And so that's why it was all very serious, like.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
A spiritual contract. It's a spiritual contract.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
And so yeah, so like as I was saying in
the Bible, like God, God passes through instead of an abrah,
He's like, you don't have to Abraham because I'm capable
of keeping all the promise in so anyway, it's a
very very big deal. And it's what marriage in Christianity
is referred to as a covenant as well. It's like
a very very serious binding, spiritual contract. And what Less

(36:46):
began to infer and eventually just say outright, was this
group is akin to a covenantal marriage, like we are
all essentially. He never said these words married to each other,
because I think a lot of us would have been like,
h right, But he did heavily infer that, and it

(37:09):
was that was the idea, is this it's a covenant.
When when you say this is a covenant that we're
all in together, that's the implication.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
So this is the most important relationship in your life.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
Most important. You can't break this contract, which is meant
to feel safe. It's like everything about that idea, the
emphasis was put on how safe it's going to make
you feel, because no matter what you do, no matter
how you hurt me, you can be one hundred percent you.

(37:39):
You're free to be who you need to be at
any given moment. You're free to make mistakes and mess up,
and I am guaranteed to never leave you as a friend.
I will always be here.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Very comforting.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Right.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Yeah, Okay, you're like, oh, that's so great, but it
never It just doesn't occur to you because you're so
focused on I mean, he's really just building little nurses.
Like that tree can only produce the fruit that it
is has, so he was building this society of little narcissists.
So we're only just thinking about ourselves, like, oh my god,
that's going to be so amazing. I'm going to be
so free to just be me, and you don't think like,
oh wait, but that means I'm stuck to stay with someone.

(38:15):
Even if you start treating me really badly and just
start being a terrible friend and maligning me and triangulating
in my relationships and gossiping about me and stealing my money.
You can do whatever you want to me, and I'm stuck.
I have to stay.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
I am a promise, yeah, to never leave you.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
The other thing about what you're saying that resonates is
I feel like a lot of times people who are
still in a group will be like, I'm not being
controlled I'm allowed to be whoever I want to be.
And that was the narrative that he was providing that
you got to do, you got to be free and
be yourself. But just because that is the narrative that
you are being fed does not mean that that is
the reality that is happening underneath.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
And that's the brilliance of it. In the worst way,
is that these people, these malignant narcissists, convince the people
in their lives that you want this, you chose this.
If there are problems here, you're creating them because you're

(39:15):
getting in the way of what you've already said that
you want, like you want this leg.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
And they're weaponizing all of your vulnerabilities against you because
you've already said I feel like I'm maybe fickle or
like this or this, I'm like try, that's you being fickle,
like you want to pull away.

Speaker 4 (39:30):
Yeah, it's just you can't be a human being and
you don't realize it because it's a never ending ladder.
You can't stop the.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Steps always moved, moving goalposts.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
However, yes, when you booked One Tree Hill, how did
Less react to that? Initially?

Speaker 4 (39:47):
I remember him being really happy for me. I was
already so far in emotionally that I don't think there
was much of a threat. I'm sure he was keeping
close tabs on me, you know, he would call and
check in and things, but there were constantly people from
the group coming out to visit and staying with me
for a few weeks at a time, and it was
like he always had a reach over. He always had

(40:09):
his arm out reach.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
And the money is going to not at that point. Okay, okay,
got married yet, Okay, so this point, the money's for you.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
The money's for me at this point. And so the
first thing he did was ask me for ten thousand
dollars for a hotel venture that they wanted to pursue
as a quote unquote ministry house. And for somebody who
was making TV money. That was like, okay, that's not
a lot, Like yeah, I feel so grown up. I've

(40:38):
never made a business deal.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
Before, invested in something before.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (40:44):
And then you know it turned into forty thousand here
and then fifty thousand. Oh that we want to buy
a restaurant, and how about you buy the restaurant for us,
And how about we buy a new swamp cooler and
a new ice cream machine. And let's re furnish the.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
Booths were going to need to make lattes.

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Yeah you know what I mean, like all of the things,
and uh, but he was smart, you know all along
the way he included me. It was like, it's like
the friend that you don't hear from for ages, and
then when they have something to promote is when the
first time they reach out to you and it's like
three days before and you're like, oh, amazing, it's so
great to hear from you, and then like oh, three
days later they're like, hey, do you mind could you

(41:22):
put your Like I saw it coming.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Like yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:27):
Yeah, that's uh. That's that's how he was. But instead
of just outright coming out and being like, hey, I'm
just calling because we need some cash. How are you
feeling about this? No pressure. It's the manipulation around it
of we're going to do a what did he call it,
the Pallette panel. We're going to do a Pallette panel
for the restaurant. We're going to have the chef make

(41:48):
all these all these new dishes and you can come
and taste them, and we're going to like bring all
the family in and we're gonna like taste all the
new dishes for the restaurant. That's great, that sounds fun. Okay,
you have a new wine, all this stuff. Oh and
while we're here, the guy who's we've been talking to
somebody about a new espresso machine. He's going to stop
by and just show us some options or whatever. So
we're tasting all these great meals, we're fine, we're drinking wine,

(42:10):
and then it's like, oh, well, this machine is twenty
five thousand dollars, but what do you think do we
need it? I mean it's an Italian restaurant. I guess
we kind of should have come.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
My god, I'm like, bro, just like the amount of
travel they were having you doing, they were keeping you exhausted,
and I mean this is from.

Speaker 4 (42:31):
That's the thing I didn't notice till later, and that
I found out more as I was like finding out
about colts, that they keep you tired and hungry and
it's busy and exhausted. And I didn't realize how much
the travel because I was thinking, well, they can't do
that to me because I'm all the way out in
North Carolina. I mean, like I have to work, but
they can't. They're not keeping me exhausted. They're not working

(42:52):
me hard. I'm not like doing these ministry hours from
six am to eight pm or nine pm.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Cleaning the bathroom, right, yeah, right.

Speaker 4 (43:02):
But it didn't. It was like the obligation that you
have to come home, like you have to work a
fourteen hour day, wake up at five am, get to
the airport, get home on a flight, and you've got
to be here for the weekend, and you can't leave
till the last flight out on Sunday. And then I
got to wake up the next morning at five houry
another workday.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
It really was exhaust not a brain cell in my brain.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
At that point.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
No.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
I want to talk about the interpersonal dynamics on set,
because this could have been had you not been so
deeply like indoctrinated and controlled at this point emotionally, psychologically, Yeah,
this could have been an opportunity for you to connect
with other people and sort of like get some perspective.
But that didn't really happen, right.

Speaker 4 (43:52):
It didn't. I wish it had. That was hard.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Was there guidance on how much you were supposed to
be interacting or can acting with other people? Was all
just kind of this internal.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
Yeah, I think by that point I was pretty self
sustaining in my belief system and who I trusted and
why I would allow some people to come in and
some people not to come in emotionally, So yeah, they
didn't really have to do too much. I just self governed.
And if I started to slip, if I started to

(44:26):
spend more time with my cast and get more involved
and go out and for drinks after work and get
more involved in their personal lives and just caring and
spending time and investing in those relationships, lo and beholds,
another group member would show up for a few weeks
to keep me company and.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Write, I've never read or thought about something you said
in the book, and I don't know why, but you
said it specifically in a way of like I couldn't
be vulnerable with people because I needed to show them
that as a Christian I was doing great. So you're
trying to be an example. I was always told I
had to be be an example to people at school.
I might be the only Bible they ever read. And

(45:04):
so you can't really be a person of people because
you have to be like, I'm showing you who christis.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
It's so bizarre. Did you grow up with a Christian,
and yeah, that was one of the biggest things. I mean,
I'm so grateful because once I got out of all this,
that was one of the biggest realizations. It's like, this
is so completely antithetical to the whole point of Jesus' ministry.
The whole thing is be human, make mistakes, be you

(45:32):
like I got you. I'm here, I got you. There's
no obligation for you to be perfect or doing well
or anything like. There's no obligation. Just live your life,
do the best that you can, and stay connected to
me as much as you can, and like we're gonna
be good. It's gotten morphed over the centuries, or maybe

(45:53):
it did right away. I don't know, but into this like, yeah,
you got to be perfect, you gotta perform, And I
definitely felt that. I felt living in that space like
I have to be I can't let people know that
I'm struggling, because how could I ever lead them to
a God that would allow them to struggle. If they're
all God's allowing me to struggle, They're not going to

(46:14):
look at my life and be like I want to
I want what you've got. They're going to be like,
your life is falling apart.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Whatever you're doing is not working right, A lot of pressure.

Speaker 4 (46:23):
Yeah, like so it's my response.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
God's reputation is my responsibility.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Oh can you and you're already under You're already under
so much pressure because you're a young person on a
TV show.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
It's so absurd, like talk about a power trip. The
responsibility of the god of the universe is like his reputation.
That reputation is my resist twenty one year old girl,
Did I feel.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Like One Tree Hill was like a way for you
to minister?

Speaker 4 (46:53):
Did it feel like for sure that I was everywhere
I went. I thought that's what I've been sent for
lot to evangelize. And I used to do an auditions too,
even sometimes I would audition and like I remember having
an audition where I had to I was supposed to
say Jesus Christ, you know, like as a curse word
in the in the script, and I wouldn't do it.

(47:15):
And I'm not. I don't want to say that in
a judgmental way for anyone who has a conviction about
that and doesn't want to say that.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
When I was young, Yeah, yeah, like I don't.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
That's how you speak and how you carry yourself in
the world is not my business. But for me as
an actor who's telling a story, when I look at that,
I'm like, that is so crazy that I would be
so obsessed with my need to evangelize that I missed
the whole point of being able to authentically raw in

(47:45):
a raw way, tell a real story. I don't sorry,
I don't mean to get us off track, but yeah,
I definitely felt when I got there, like, oh, yeah,
this is my job.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
I mean, and was less actually trying to recruit anyone
at that point, or he kind of like closed off a.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
Little bit, right, wasn't active recruiting. I mean, he kept
up the facade of the church by having Saturday morning
meetings because he came out of a Seventh day Adventism
and so they meet on Saturdays. And so he was like, well,
we'll do Saturday morning church at the hotel at the

(48:19):
time or then at the restaurant later. But the people
who were invited to the church service were just friends
of all of us, or people he would meet, or
you know, people he'd meet at rotary club or whatever,
and they were all invited and he would speak and
it was a very it seemed like just a very
benign Sunday thing. But none of them were invited to
be a part of the big House family, like the
family of people that all spent time in this big

(48:41):
house whether you lived there or lived near this that
was the Covenant Group family, and you couldn't get in.
So he wasn't recruiting people for the inner core group,
but he certainly wanted to keep up appearances like, oh,
we just I just run a church. Like it's just
a church.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
You have to at least pretend to be spreading a message. Yeah,
others a Saturday morning church.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Right while you are working. People started to become aware
that you were a part of this group and a
little bit suspicious. So how did you experience that?

Speaker 4 (49:13):
You know, in my mind at the time, it felt
like I just thought I was more spiritually mature than
other people, and they didn't understand. They weren't willing to
be brave and go to the depths of relationship that
I was willing to go to, and that my family,
my you know, quote unquote family, spiritual family, was willing
to go to. And so I just, yeah, I think

(49:34):
I just dismissed it as like that's really sad, like
they just don't know. And by the way, the more
you misunderstand me and the more I suffer because of
your misunderstanding, the greater a Christian. That must mean that
I am right. Because I am receiving so much opposition,
I must be doing the right thing right. I mean,

(49:55):
it's a real cycle.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Have y'all found yourself ever being like a little bit
Massachus because you were taught to self sacrifice, Like sometimes
I'll be waiting in a line and it'll be taking forever,
and I like kind of want it to take long. No,
I like want to suffer or something like I feel
like I need to.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
I feel like that was taught to me, but I
never internalized it. I hate like he hate suffering.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, sometimes I.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Just say emotionally maybe emotionally Yeah, sometimes.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
I just be like I gotta do it anyway.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
Yeah, I don't. I don't know that. I know. I
think I'm more with you that I kind of rebelled,
and just once I got out, I was like, no, no,
no more. I don't I walk on my boundaries anymore.
But I went through a journey with suffering too, because
I think it's just a natural human condition and we
try that I mean that was the for me. One
of the huge realizations getting out of this was I

(50:48):
don't there's no entitlement card as a human being to
be like, I don't. I don't get to suffer, like
that's just part of humanity. I don't necessarily deserve rescue
from things that I'm suffering for, Like, so what can
I use how can I harvest? How can I turn
this into something good? How can I see the redemption
arc on the other side of this, There's got to

(51:08):
be a reason for it, Like I can't just be
if there's no reason for it, then you get into justice,
and that's a whole other conversation. But there's totally a lot.
There's a lot there. But what is so heartbreaking about
someone messing with your concept of suffering is making you
think you deserve to suffer in some way or to

(51:30):
or making it an ego trip that if I'm suffering,
I'm better than you, right, and then it's a sense
of superiority totally.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
I mean totally ingranded into my brain, like turn the
other cheek never yelled back.

Speaker 4 (51:42):
I know you're forced to.

Speaker 1 (51:43):
Forgive mediately crazy things.

Speaker 4 (51:46):
We all want to feel good, Like this is why
it's schoolyard bullies, Like I want to feel better than
the other person because it's the lowest hanging fruit. How
do I make myself feel better about myself put somebody
else down. So if I'm capable of experiencing suffering and
still being pious and still maintaining my holiness and whatever,

(52:08):
and you can't, then I'm better than you, right, And
so that's the my dopamine hit.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
So I just shin up and experience my suffering. Yeah,
I mean I know non religious people who also totally
yeah like that. I just want to know where you
were at with your parents.

Speaker 4 (52:25):
Yeah, they they were. They were really concerned. And my
mom and I read about this in the book that
she was really smart and new to just stay steady,
and she wanted a relationship with me, and so she
was willing to just not talk too much about it
and not push too many buttons. When she started to
sense that I was getting my feathers ruffled about something

(52:48):
she might be saying or questioning, or if I felt
fear that, like are you going to make me doubt?
Because I can't afford a doubt, she would just stop
and move move on new topic, whatever, oh.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
Yeah, he would you with the term investigative questions or
something legal question It's like there's questions that are just
so you can't even think them.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's a study even. I mean, it's
true that that's crazy, but that's also in not so
many words, in many religions. That's why people get so dogmatic,
because you're like, I can't afford I built my entire
identity on this. If you make me question something, then
everything I have falls apart. So I'd rather not just

(53:30):
ignorance is blissed. I'd rather just not question it. I'm
too afraid to question. And my dad was much more
vocal about it, and I think he just thought he could.
He was relying on the brain that he knew I had.
He was like, you are a smart person, listen to me.
Let's do our critical thinking thing that we do. And
I just wasn't having it. I would not. I was

(53:51):
too far gone, and so I cut him out and
I didn't have a relationship with my dad for six years.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
I mean, And it's just such a classic example of
what we see over and over again, which is that like,
if someone is directly attacking the beliefs and the like
source of identity and community like that will that very
often leads to them getting cut out and shut out completely,
versus someone who wants who maintains the relationship, will have
an easier time eventually maybe getting through.

Speaker 4 (54:19):
Be curious or critical, Yes, exactly, because you can't. Again,
you can't have doubts.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
You can't.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
It's too the cost is too high to have doubts.
So if you've got somebody in your life who's aggressively
making sense and aggressively causing you to question the situation
that you're in, you really only have two choices. You
approach that person with a total willingness to have everything
about your identity collapse and find new information and move

(54:45):
on and start a new version of your life, or
you cut the person out because you can't handle all
of their information.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Which is an extremely painful thing, like that collapse that
you're talking about. I mean people describe it as.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
A death like can you go do ye?

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Like and community death and complete.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Meaning death yes.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Meaning like so I feel like especially right now where
so many we're also polarized, and everyone's like, how could
they think that? It's like, it is so painful to
alter your beliefs when you have invested so much of
your life, especially when that would mean that someone was
manipulating you and that that person's a bad person. Like
it's it's just too painful.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
And remember the scientist we had on who talked about
the brain scans of how painful it literally is to
change a belief, Like it's physically painful.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
Really. Yeah, yeah that that Yeah, that tracks so bell,
I just want to touch on that really quickly if
you don't.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
I had this dream and it all comes back to family,
Like you had this beautiful grandmother who was an actress,
and she was like stage and new that was a
little musical theater, musical theater. Yeah, and you kind of
got this opportunity to perhaps play balance.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
Yeah, I got the part.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
I'm so sorry. I thought you were still in like
production meetings you got.

Speaker 2 (56:10):
No, I got the part.

Speaker 4 (56:11):
And actually we just realized that as I was reading
the audio book. I was like, somewhere in the ghosts
of drafts, as we moved some paragraphs around and stuff,
the actual sentence of me saying I got the part disappeared.

Speaker 2 (56:21):
Okay, I received that, you got Okay, I did not.

Speaker 4 (56:25):
I did not know, so we fixed it for the
next print man. But yeah, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
I mean but even so, like you, I knew you
said no to producers wanting more from me, and yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:35):
Yeah, no, I had. I had auditioned for Bell several
times in my life, and I just as I said it,
you know, it always went to somebody. They were at
the point in the show where they were just offering
the part to pop stars and people who really really
talented people but more well known. And the perfect symbiosis
of me having musical theater gifts and then also being

(57:00):
on a show that was really popular was like a
really it was. It was like a perfect I said
perfect storm, but it wasn't a storm. It was I
don't know if something else.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
What's perfect a croissant person. So yeah, I got the.

Speaker 4 (57:14):
Part and then and I had been wanting that my
whole life. It was like the one role that I
was desperate to do, and Less was very effective in
convincing me that I was on a very dangerous path
to making my career my God, that God had given

(57:37):
me this opportunity to become a part of a family
in a way that I had never experienced before because
I was an only child, and it's like joy. You
can't outgive God, right, God's offering this to you. You
know you could, you could choose either one. But you're young.
Your career is so far ahead of you, Like you
should just experience what it's like to be a part

(57:58):
of a real family, because that's the fun foundation that
you're going to need when your career really does blow up.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
And meanwhile, he's probably just like Broadway doesn't pay a
lot of money.

Speaker 4 (58:06):
I want you on TV eight percent. And if I'd
gone to New York, I mean further yeah, I'd be
further away. New York is talk about me like that's
the origins of my being an independent, tough girl, like
Jersey girl. I was always totally fine on my own.
I learned that as a kid to really enjoy my

(58:27):
own company. I had no problem riding the subway at
ten o'clock at night.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
I was I was.

Speaker 4 (58:32):
I was like a cool New York kid, you know,
a cool girl, And I was really I was excited
about the possibility of going back to New York. And
he knew if I did that, then I'd move on
to do other things.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
You know.

Speaker 4 (58:43):
The girl that actually took that part in my place,
who's a brilliant actress, moved on and opened Mary Poppins
on Broadway and many other things. So you know, there
was a career trajectory that would have been probably laid
out for me, whether it was you know, Poppins or
something else, because Ashley Brown's amazing, But that I think.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
It was easy to see for Less that's where I
would have gone.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
It would have been. Really it was one thing to
get me to want to spend time in Idaho and
miss Idaho and the Pacific Northwest. While I was on
One Tree Hill and I was it was easy to
be isolated. It's not easy to be isolated in New
York City. And I think he knew if I got
to New York it's all over.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
To control you the same extent. So I was so mad.
We were both so madly.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
That's a hard pill those well, yeah, that's yeah, that's
what I really.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Want you to do it Now someone needs to.

Speaker 4 (59:37):
Oh my god, can you imagine? Like yes, I can get.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
I'm imagining it right now. It's still looking young on stage.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
I think Ergo just played a nineteen year old and
she's like forty two.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
So maybe maybe it'll Yeah, truly, how.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Did you find out how much money have been taking?

Speaker 4 (01:00:00):
Shit? I went to the bank, Like, I just went
to the bank. I was separated. I was like, we
I need to separate the money because I was feeling
uncomfortable with how much access my ex had and his
family through him had because he was very much upon

(01:00:23):
in all of this. I mean, poor guy was like
he was raised in it. Like what is oh? Yeah,
do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
I was just touched on those really quickly. It almost
was like a twin flame thing almost, where like people
in the group started getting married. So you yeah, you
kind of married into the Yeah. Yeah, so I married
into the group. It was the leader's son. And he
has many wonderful qualities. I say many nice things about him.

Speaker 4 (01:00:49):
He had some really bad behavior when we were young.
I don't know how he behaves now, but I can
tell you he was raised in that. And I really
don't know. I mean, you guys know, particularly you were
raised and you were also raised as Mormon, Okay, so
before the yeah, before the shift for you. So I
don't know when and how that shift happens for people.

(01:01:11):
Like there's a moment for some people when you just
wake up and realize what's going on. And sometimes it's
a real slow burn. Sometimes it's more overnight, and some
people never get out of it. I don't know how
or why, but he was raised in it, and he
was a pawn, and so they had access to my
money through him, and I just didn't like how much

(01:01:33):
of it was. I just felt like, I'm uncomfortable with this.
I don't like this. So I went to the bank
and I said, let's I'm going to take control over
my money again. I left a bit. I'm going to
leave a big chunk for him, so it's not I'm
not trying to like sweep the accounts, but there's enough
for him for a year. He's going to go get
a job. Like I gave him a what I thought
was cushion. And when I walked into the bank, a

(01:01:57):
friend of mine was a teller of a group member
who had also been started to distance herself from the group,
and she opened up my accounts and showed me the balance,
and I was like, what what am I looking at?
This is? Is there a different account that I should
be like? What other accounts are under my name? This
isn't the right one? Because I had probably made about

(01:02:20):
two million dollars over I mean I had made more
over the course of the nine years on the show.
But I knew that I had spent some on the restaurant.
I knew that there had been withdraws for the hotel
and American Express bills and things like that, and commission
from Your Life and commission and all those things. So
there was a but I knew there should have been

(01:02:42):
about two million in the bank and there wasn't. It
was it was about two hundred thousand, and I already
owed lawyers. My house was underwater, the irs, there were
issues with there were outstanding credit card bills. There was
another house that had been purchased that I don't remembering
anything on that deed, but it's maybe my ex did

(01:03:03):
or maybe I did and I was just in a
haze and don't remember. But that was the house for
the chef of the restaurant. We bought him a house.
Oh my goodness, super horrible, And yeah, it was. It
was really scary to just be to know that that
meant that I was pretty much broke, Like I had

(01:03:24):
enough to that I could stretch it out and kind
of snowball things and be like not Rob Peter to
pay Paul, but like, you know, push off this payment
so that I could pay this one, and then push
off that one so that I could pay that one.
And so I knew I could do some shuffling. But
I wasn't. I mean I was. I was broke, Like
I had to just start from scratch one hundred percent
because all that money was committed for rent and lawyers

(01:03:46):
and all these other things.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
It's wild after that long on such a big show.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Yeah, I was surprised that they'd left two hundred grand,
to be honest, I thought I thought it would be twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
Bucks I was.

Speaker 4 (01:03:59):
I mean maybe, yeah, I don't know, but I think
just the way it that that is, that was like
enough to sort of just keep the accounts, keep everything moving,
because you also don't forget like they they knew that
they were going to need more money because it was
the Bank of Joy, so they had to leave something
in there that was substantial enough that they could keep
dipping into, even on a smaller scale.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Right, And the scene of you finding this out with
the woman who you used to be in the group
with is just so beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
I'm gonna cry. Everybody needs to read this book. We
haven't even.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Touched on like a fourth of what we wanted to,
but yeah, that scene is.

Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
Gorgeous, Thank you so much. Yeah that was rough. And
then when we got into it with the forensic accountant too,
started to dive in and find like you found all
of these checks with my bank account number on the
bottom and the restaurant name on the top, like somebody
had just printed up fake checks with the restaurant name
and my bank account, so like you don't get the tax.

(01:05:00):
You know, it was just like a full pull out
of my account for like seventy thousand dollars, like there
were so there was so much crazy shit that went
down with the money. And at the end of the
day it was a separate trial, and I was like,
I'm exhausted. I've been doing this for three years. I
just want my kid, I just want to go start
my life over. And so I just had to let

(01:05:23):
let all of that go. But what's amazing is how
much I learned from that and how much I like,
it was a devastating, devastating experience, but I rebuilt and
I was continually cared for and to see that a
check showed up in the mail residual checks always turned
up at the eleventh hour. There was always something like

(01:05:43):
I was taken care of, and I didn't do it.
It wasn't me like hustling and doing like I got
jobs sparingly. But it was kind of miraculous. So it
really solidified a new It was it was a really
solidifying thing in the new version of my faith to
see in real time how cosmically I was like taken

(01:06:04):
care of in this totally hopeless situation. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
Was the money the thing that sent you over the edge, Like,
what was the thing that made you really decide you
were done?

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
I think it was. I think by the point, I
can't remember the chronology. I did my best to put
the chronology in correct order, but there may have just
been some things for narrative sense that we moved around.
But I can't remember if I was if I had
already asked for a divorce and then went to the bank,

(01:06:37):
or if I went to the bank first and asked
for a divorce. I don't know. But the money was it,
I mean, yes, it was. That was a big because
you're like, who oh, that's this is a thief. Yes,
something's really, really, really wrong and this is not okay.
I don't, I don't what happened. And I was definitely
in a major haze about that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
But yeah, and everyone should read the book because you
do lay out along the way all of the thing
that did make you and other people in the group
start to question what's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
And he would accuse people who questioned it being bipolar.

Speaker 4 (01:07:10):
I mean, there's every woman.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Every woman with bipolar.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
I've heard so many, by the way, like I put
two in the book, but it was five at least,
like everything like every woman. I was like, this is
just going to be too much. I can't just keep
writing this over and over again. Wow, So I made
the point, but in actuality, yes, I heard this multiple
times throughout my time in the group. So and so
is bipolar. Pray for her and that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
Less was bipolar.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
And then there's just this beautiful arc in the end
that we won't give away.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
But your dad, dad, not your last dad, my natural
dad dad is back in your life and saves the
day so hard, And I was just like, perfect story.
I love it, bumps, thank you, I really do it
is it is really beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
He really like the way your parents really were caring about,
you know, when you were isolating yourself from them. Is
really wonderful to read about. And I guess since we
are almost out of time here, I you know, if
what would you say to somebody who might be in
a Bible study group or a self help group or

(01:08:19):
whatever it may be, and having just like little things
that they're noticing, but like, what would you tell them
to look out for or think about?

Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
That's a good question. There are a lot, I mean,
there's a lot of red flags to look out for.
And anybody who is saying we've got something that nobody
else has, we're special and you should look down on
or feel bad for people who don't have what we've got.
If that is implied, whether it's just said out right

(01:08:49):
or whether it's just implied, that's a real red flag.
That's something you should really pay attention to. And that
I don't think that means that truth doesn't exist. I
think it means you you need to pay attention to
what the fruit of the truth that you're being told
is going to produce in your life. So the isolation
is another really big factor. Getting if you start feeling

(01:09:13):
like you suddenly don't trust a lot of people in
your life. That also is a red flag that you're
involved in something that is isolating you, because again, truth
rises to the top like cream.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
Truth is truth.

Speaker 4 (01:09:31):
You don't need to be afraid. There's nothing for you
to be afraid of in listening to other people's perspectives,
hearing what somebody else thinks about what's going on in
your life, hearing what somebody else thinks about what you believe,
hearing how someone else believes differently than what you believe.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
And that's an important point to make in today's society
because we're taught like if somebody doesn't agree with you,
do not talk to them, even your family, like get
away from them. That you don't need to hear those shit.
And it's like for sure that we call the boundaries. Yeah,
and for sure that might be true for some people,
but most people, like you got to keep in conversation
with them to like balance it out a little.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
If someone is telling you to shut out a perspective
completely from your psyche and not think about what might
be in that perspective or what you're someone you love
might have to say to you, Yeah, that is very
dangerous territory because you can hear the perspective, and you
can always decide you're not going to absolutely incorporate it
into your life.

Speaker 4 (01:10:27):
Absolutely, But if you doubt yourself so much, you doubt
your mind and your ability to critically think and to assess,
you doubt your gut so much that you can't even
engage in a conversation with someone else about a totally
different viewpoint without getting implacably angry. Yeah, there's something wrong. Yeah,
you are involved in a mindset that has told you

(01:10:50):
to be afraid. That's the biggest red flag for me,
is like, if you are super super angry by listening
to someone else's point of view that conflicts with yours,
be careful, please be careful.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
Amen.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Tell us where we can find your book.

Speaker 4 (01:11:10):
Dinner for Vampires is available anywhere books are sold as
far as I know, Parage. You can get it at
Hudson News, yeah, big barn asses. Pick it up at
all of your all of your local bookstores as well
small bookstores and Amazon of course. And on audiobook. I

(01:11:31):
narrate the audiobook, which is really fun and difficult at times,
but I enjoyed the experience, and uh, I hope you
like it Dinner for Vampires.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:11:42):
Thank you guys, thank you for asking such interesting questions too.
It's really awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Thanks, I mean your fascinating story. Yeah, thank you, and
there we have it. Big thanks to Joy for joining
us in person. What are your big takeaways, Megan, Because
we've taught we talked about a couple of things.

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
One of the things I really want to highlight is
her mother and how her mother maintained this relationship with
her throughout her entire journey into this cult. Was that
her mom didn't really attack her, She didn't say you're
an idiot. She just kept asking questions and keeping an
open mind, and through that Joy was able to keep

(01:12:19):
a relationship with her and ultimately get out. So just
one of the things we see a lot but really clear.

Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
In this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
Yeah, I mean, I totally understand her dad wanting to
take down the cult as well. Like both reactions completely
make sense. However, no one can judge how anyone responds
to their loved one being in a cult, but it
can be so helpful when they are finally ready to leave, because,
as we know, you cannot force someone to be ready.
They have to be ready and not attacking that belief

(01:12:50):
system along the way can make you a safe person
to ask.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
Two questions, asking questions, letting them hear it out loud,
and asking another question and not being attacky about it.
Just curious. Her dad has an amazing arc in this book.
We're not giving it away, but yeah, it's a Yin
and yang situation.

Speaker 4 (01:13:08):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
And I'm sure he asked questions too and didn't freak
out sometimes on her but her mom. It was a
real takeaway for me of just that point that always
hits home of what works.

Speaker 2 (01:13:20):
Yeah. Yeah, And just to add on one final thing,
I thought, I still think about what Derek Black talked
about in their episode, and for those who haven't listened,
that was a former white nationalist, David Duke's like poster
child when they were growing up, and then you know,
they grew up and denounced that ideology and denounced racism.

(01:13:40):
They talked about this that yin yang precisely like there
were the people who were coming after them and attacking them,
and it was like valuable in a way, but it
wasn't enough. It wasn't the thing that actually changed their mind.
It was the people who did ask questions that ultimately
like helped them to. So what does it see the
error and their ways?

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Yeah, whatever the case may be, She's just really touched
on it in this book in a beautiful way. So
totally For anybody who feels like their family right now
might be lost in conspiracy theories or super high control
religions or any sort of thinking that is really intense,
maybe just ask some questions about it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
Yeah, you talk to them, Just talk to them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
All right, Okay, thank you so much for joining us.
As always, we can't wait to see you again here
next week, and as always, remember to follow your gut,
watch out for red flags, and never ever trust me.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
Bye bye. Trust Me is produced by Kirsten Woodward, Gabby Rapp,
and Steve Delemator.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
With special thanks to Stacy Para.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
And her theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast,
Twitter at trust Me Cult pod, or on TikTok at
trust Me Cult Podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
I'm Ula on Instagram and Ola Lola on Twitter.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
And I am Megan Elizabeth eleven on Instagram and Abraham
Hicks on Twitter.

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Bethany Joy Lenz - One Tree Hill, a Secret Cult, and Living a Double Life

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Bethany Joy Lenz - One Tree Hill, a Secret Cult, and Living a Double Life