Back in 2018, in the early days of the #MeToo movement, Mark Schwahn received his comeuppance. The creator of One Tree Hill was accused by several female cast members of sexual harassment. He still hasn’t apologized. But allegations of bad behavior continue to pour out, including from three alums who have their own One Tree Hill podcast.
As per Variety, Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton, and Bethany Joy Lenz — who played Brooke, Peyton, and Haley, respectively — spent a recent episode of their podcast Drama Queens talking about an episode that really brings up some bad memories. In the fourth episode of Season 4, Brooke takes pictures of Rachel (Danneel Ackles) for Maxim magazine.
As it happened, the following month Bush, Burton, and Ackles all appeared on the cover of the men’s magazine for real. Bush was not into the idea, especially considering how the show had suddenly started leaning more into sexualizing the female characters. She told the producers she wasn’t into it, which did not go over well.
“I literally got told, ‘If you do not go and shoot this cover with your co-stars, we will guarantee you that you will never be let out for a press day, a movie, an event, any of your charities. We will keep you here for ever,’” Bush recalled.
Burton herself remembered being chewed out by Schwahn. “It was very much a, ‘No one else wants you, the studio wants to cancel your show,’” she said. “You don’t start to generate some buzz and attract these male numbers, we’re dead and all your friends are going to lose their jobs.’”
And so the Maxim shoot happened, but Schwahn, they claimed, tried to punish them by pitting them against each other. Lenz was told about the shoot and informed she hadn’t been invited to participate.
“They told me that they didn’t come to me because I was too fat,” Lenz recalled. “I wasn’t a hot girl on the show anymore.”
At this point during the podcast, both Bush and Burton expressed shock, saying they’d been told Lenz had been invited but turned it down.
“When I said I don’t want to do it, I was like, ‘But Joy’s not doing it! She said no. Why does she get to say no?’ They go, ‘Well she said no, so you have to say yes. She said no first,’” remembered Bush. “They scapegoated you to tell the three of us we couldn’t say no… We weren’t mad at you but we were pissed about it.”
There are more shocking claims in the podcast episode, all of which paint a picture of an unpleasant show to work on.
(Via Variety)