Bethany Joy Lenz talks about her experiences in a cult.

The 43-year-old actress spent ten years in a small, ultra-Christian group during her time on One Tree Hill. She told People in an interview published Monday that she defended her affiliation with the cult to the other actors on the show.

“I could see it in their faces,” said Lenz, whose memoir, “Dinner for Vampires,” will be published Oct. 22.

“But I would justify it like this: 'I can't possibly belong to a cult.' “It's just that I have access to a relationship with God and people like everyone else wants, but they don't know how to get there,” she remembers.

Lenz said that co-star Craig Sheffer, who played Keith Scott, once openly told her that she belonged to a cult.

“I thought, ‘No, no, no. Cults are strange. Cults are people in robes who sing crazy things and drink Kool-Aid. That's not what we do!'” she explained.

Lenz joined the religious group after meeting the lead pastor at a Bible study, which she joined when she moved to Los Angeles at age 20.

“I was always looking for a place to belong,” she said, explaining that the group initially consisted of singing, worshiping and talking about God and the meaning of life.

However, Lenz became suspicious when a visiting pastor (whom she called “Les”) convinced members of the Bible study to move to a “big house” in Idaho.

“It still looked normal,” she said of the cult. “And then it just changed. But when it started to change, I was too immersed in the relationships to notice. Plus, I was so young.”

Lenz finally left the cult in 2012, a year after the birth of her daughter Rosie. In the same year she separated from her husband and fellow cultist Michael Galeotti.

“There was so much at stake,” she said of leaving the cult. “They were my only friends. I married into this group. I had built my entire life around it. If I admitted I was wrong…everything else would fall apart.”

Last year, Lenz said on the “Biscuits & Jam” podcast that the cast of “One Tree Hill” — which included Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton, Chad Michael Murray and James Lafferty — supported her after she left the religious group.

“I feel like a lot of people there knew, whether consciously or unconsciously, that just their presence and their encouragement and the way they let me know that they still loved me and cared for me, even though I was a bit strange. “It made a big difference,” said Lenz. “It made me feel like there was a security.”

“When it came time for me to leave that group, I still felt like there were a lot of open arms and that felt really, really good and was really helpful,” the Guiding Light added star added.

According to the description of Lenz's book, the actress “found the courage” to leave the cult after becoming a mother in order to “spare her child a similar fate.”

“After nearly a decade, she finally managed to escape the family's grasp and recover from the deep trauma that forever changed her relationship with God and her understanding of faith,” the description reads.

“Dinner for Vampires” will be released on October 22nd.