One Tree Hill's Tyler Hilton Says Bethany Joy Lenz Romance Ended Because Her 'Cult' Didn't Approve

11/21/2024 10:13 AM

Bethany Joy Lenz revealed in 2023 that she'd been part of a "cult" for a decade while filming One Tree Hill, offering details of how the group impacted her relationships with her family, friends, and castmates.

Now that Bethany Joy Lenz has opened up about her experience with The Big House Family, which she has since described as a "cult," her One Tree Hill costar Tyler Hilton is sharing how that group purportedly impacted their budding relationship.

According to Hilton, who portrayed Chris Keller on the hit show, producers leaned into the real-life feelings developing between the two actors and wrote a romance into the show for him and her character, Haley James Scott, amid marital woes with her TV husband Nathan Scott (James Lafferty).

"I started to divine that she was in a cult," Hilton said during a live appearance captured in a TikTok video and shared earlier this week.

"We had so many beautiful, deep conversations about religion and stuff and every once and a while I'd just get cult vibes," he elaborated, per E! News. "So I was really into her, though, and I was like, 'Dude, I'm down with cults. I don't care about that s--t."

Apparently, at least according to Hilton, when their feelings started to grow stronger, her "cult" made their way to one of his live performances "and they sussed me out."

"They were like, 'Yeah, he's not the vibe,'" Hilton shared. "She was like, 'Yeah, the cult said no.'"

According to Hilton, that was the end of it, too. "I didn't really have an answer for that one," he said. "Normally, if you tell a girl, 'Oh, is there something I can do?' But if the cult says no, you're f--ked."

"I'd never really been broken up with by a cult before," he laughed. "That was a first time."

TooFab has reached out to Lenz's reps for comment.

Lenz's 'Cult' History

Lenz has been candid for several years now about finding herself a part of a "cult for 10 years" while filming the show, even saying that her castmates had tried to save her from it.

She first opened up about her experience on her Drama Queens podcast in July 2023, saying at the time that she thought it would be vaulable to write about that, and her decade-long recovery.

The next month, she started to share a bit more in an interview with Variety about the Bible-based study group she found herself getting more and more involved with, saying that the cast was unable to break their hold on her because the group set out to "build a deep wedge of distrust" between her and her cast.

The influence of the cult even derailed her burgeoning career, with Lenz turning down film and theater roles. "Everything I'd trained for, all my childhood dreams were coming true and I said no to all of it so I could go live with this remote, small group of people, convinced I was making a noble, spiritual sacrifice," she said.

Finally, on October 22, 2024, Lenz' long-awaited memoir hit bookstore shelves, detailing her life, career, and her entanglements with the religious organization she came to describe as a "cult," which she went so far as to accuse of stealing her money and brainwashing her.

Lenz would ultimately marry Michael Galeotti Jr., the son of Big House Family leader Michael Galeotti, which she opened up about more during an appearance on Call Her Daddy last month. The couple would ultimately divorce in 2012 after seven years of marriage. They share teen daughter Rosie.

In response to the memoir, the senior Galeotti told Daily Mail in an interview published Oct. 22, "Everybody sees things a little differently and she's going to cling to the fame. Good for her. She's going to make a name for herself. But it's not the way it went down."