Bethany Joy Lenz is making some startling, behind-the-scenes revelations about “ One Tree Hill ,” the beloved teen series that gave her a breakout role. In her new memoir, “Dinner for Vampires,” Lenz credited “One Tree Hill” with having “ saved my life ” during her years as a member of an insular Christian group called the Big House Family. However, the actor also accused the show’s creator of deliberately writing storylines for her character, Haley James Scott, that made her personally uncomfortable.
“The more my personal beliefs and preferences interfered with the creator’s demands, the more he started writing things into the storylines that I assume were an attempt to humiliate or antagonize me,” she wrote, according to excerpts from the book shared by Entertainment Weekly . “Like making other characters call Haley ‘fat.’ Or having Haley ‘overreact’ to her high school boyfriend watching porn.
” Lenz took specific issue with the porn storyline, which appeared in a 2004 episode titled “The Leaving Song” that aired during the show’s first season. The dialogue written for Haley, the actor recalled, was “degrading and doing a disservice to the young women who looked up to me.” After a “big battle” on the show’s set, Lenz said she decided to rewrite some of Haley’s lines herself.
“It caused confusion and aggravation for the director, the other actors, the script supervisor, and the producers,” she wrote. “I felt awful. B.