“One Tree Hill” star Bethany Joy Lenz says she was given a straightforward synopsis of the hit teen drama series before her final audition.
Lenz, 43, who played the role of Haley James Scott, claims she had an awkward phone conversation with her manager just hours before her last 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 recalled her manager saying in her upcoming memoir, “Dinner for Vampire.“
“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,” her manager said after speaking to one of the show’s execs.
The actress says she and her manager were speechless at this explanation.
Even with the bluntness from the exec, Lenz writes, she was attracted 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 time, Lenz said, she had turned down the opportunity to star in “What I Like About You,” which went to then-teenager Amanda Bynes.
Lenz, who was raised in an Evangelical Christian household, said she was worried that portraying a woman living with her boyfriend would “normalize ‘living in sin’ for young girls.”
Lenz later wrote she felt comfortable with the “awkward girl next door” character, whom she viewed as the “most wholesome” member of the main cast.
©CW Network/Courtesy Everett Collection
“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 go on to get pregnant, engaged and live with Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) while she was in high school.
“One Tree Hill” originally aired on the WB, now known as the CW, from September 2003 to 2012. The series was set in Tree Hill, a small but not too quiet town in North Carolina, and focused on sports and complicated love triangles among high school kids.
Chad Michael Murray, Lafferty, Sophia Bush, Lee Norris, Craig Sheffer and Paul Johnson 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 stuck with Lenz every time she would try to push back against certain decisions — for example, 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 wrote 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.”
Lenz said 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!’” she explained.
Lenz eventually left the cult in 2012 after the birth of her daughter Rosie. She split from her husband, cult member Michael Galeotti, the same year.
Lenz’s memoir, “Dinner for Vampires,” is now out.