Bethany Joy Lenz, the actress who played Haley James Scott on the hit teen drama series “One Tree Hill,” revealed that she received a candid synopsis of the show before her final audition. Lenz, now 43, recounts an uncomfortable phone call with her manager just hours before her chemistry read for the show. “I have a direct quote that I’ve been asked to relay to you, to make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into before you sign this contract,” Lenz recalls her manager saying in her memoir, “Dinner for Vampire.” Her manager then quoted an executive from the show, saying, “You tell her this show is about f—ing and sucking and if she’s gonna have a problem with that, she shouldn’t come in tomorrow.”
Lenz and her manager were left speechless by this blunt explanation. Despite the executive’s frankness, Lenz was drawn to the show because it “felt different from most bubble-gum TV with subliminal agendas” in her memoir. “Grit didn’t scare me, and the ‘One Tree Hill’ pilot had grit,” she continued. During this period, Lenz had turned down the opportunity to star in “What I Like About You,” which eventually went to Amanda Bynes.
Raised in an Evangelical Christian household, Lenz was concerned that portraying a woman living with her boyfriend would “normalize ‘living in sin’ for young girls.” However, she felt comfortable with her character, whom she viewed as the “most wholesome” member of the main cast. “I didn’t feel too at risk of being objectified,” Lenz wrote. “I believed in this show and its ability to send meaningful, uplifting messages to the audience.” Her character would later get pregnant, engaged, and live with Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) while still in high school.
“One Tree Hill” aired on the WB, now known as the CW, from September 2003 to 2012. The show followed the lives of high-school kids in Tree Hill, a small town in North Carolina. The series was set in Tree Hill, a small but not too quiet town in North Carolina, focusing on sports and complicated love-triangles. Chad Michael Murray, Lafferty, Sophia Bush, Lee Norris, Craig Sheffer, and Paul Johansson starred alongside Lenz in the hit teen drama series.
Lenz told her manager: “Just tell him I understand what he’s saying. I’m not gonna try to stop them from writing about real teenagers. I believe in this show and I want to be a part of it.” During the show’s nine seasons, the “f—ing and sucking” comment remained with Lenz, especially when she pushed back against certain decisions, such as being asked to film a scene while only wearing a bra. “When I stood my ground as a matter of religious modesty, my manager would get a call, ‘She’s being difficult again. We told you what this show was about,’” Lenz wrote. “And, in fairness, they did. The ‘f—ing and sucking’ executive has been very clear about that. I guess I just looked at my character and figured that would be other people’s storylines.”
Lenz also shared in her memoir about opening up to her castmates about being in a cult. “I could see it on their faces,” she wrote. “But I’d 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.” Sheffer once told her outright that she was in a cult. “I was like, ‘No, no, no. Cults are weird. Cults are people in robes chanting crazy things and drinking Kool-Aid. That’s not what we do!’” Lenz eventually left the cult in 2012 after the birth of her daughter Rosie. She split from her husband and cult member, Michael Galeotti, the same year. Lenz’s memoir, “Dinner for Vampires,” is now available.
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