Hilarie Burton is calling out her former boss for a creepy AF thing he once did!
In last week’s episode of her podcast Drama Queens with her One Tree Hill co-stars Sophia Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz, the ladies were recounting memories from season 5, episode 13 titled Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace. And during the convo, Hilarie dropped a shocking revelation!
She and OTH creator Mark Schwahn — whom she did not name but simply referred to as the Harry Potter villain “Voldermort” — were on the outs at the time. After dealing with a string of alleged inappropriate behaviors from him, the leading lady was giving him the silent treatment — which he apparently didn’t like much!
She explained:
“I wasn’t speaking to him in real life, and so he wrote himself into the episode of me hugging him.”
Jeez. That’s f**ked up!!
Related: Bethany Joy Lenz Says One Tree Hill Co-Stars Tried To ‘Rescue’ Her From Cult!
Bethany quickly said, “that is so psychotic,” while Sophia added:
“Can you guys imagine Shonda Rhimes or Aaron Sorkin casting themselves on their own show?”
It’s not even that he wanted a cameo, tho. The bigger problem is he clearly wanted to leverage his power over the actress!! Why else would he script her hugging him when he knew she didn’t even want to speak to him!? It’s so uncalled for!
In the aforementioned episode, Mark appears as a record store owner, Max, whom Hilarie’s character Peyton Sawyer is friendly with. But the whole thing made her super uncomfortable, so she asked her dad to be present on set as an extra layer of protection, she recalled:
“I got the script and I was like, ‘All right, it’s one day of work. It’s just one day of work.’ And you know, my boyfriend’s dad [Gregory Prange] was directing, and my brother’s on set.”
She continued:
“There’s all these dudes on set and it just wasn’t quite enough, so I invited my dad to work this day, and my dad came and sat behind the monitor the whole day, which was kinda weird, right? Because he clearly wasn’t there to be friendly. He was just being a presence.”
And it did work, she noted:
“You can’t touch me, you can’t pull me into a sidebar conversation, you can’t do any of that if I’m just making jokes with my dad.”
So sad to think she needed to call in her parent just to feel safe from her boss!
Related: If Sophia Bush Divorce ‘Wasn’t Ugly’ Then WTF Is This About?!
But, we gotta say, her dad understood the assignment! The White Collar star revealed during the lunch break “Voldemort goes off to the production office, where his office has, like, a view of the parking lot.” And so her dad did the funniest thing!
She dished:
“And my dad and [sound mixer Michael Rayle] proceed to go out to parking and pull out bullwhips and start doing all these tricks and cracking them real loud… It was just like a message, like: Hey, don’t.”
Hah! Love it!!
Unfortunately, this isn’t Hilarie’s only unsavory interaction with the writer. In March, she claimed Chad Michael Murray defended her against Schwahn amid an alleged assault while on location in Honey Grove, Texas in 2007 while filming the fourth season. She said at the time:
“Chad walked up and goes, ‘What are you doing?’ He said that to our boss in the bar. He watched our boss grab me in front of a lot of people, and you know, Chad didn’t have anything to lose because he knew our boss hated him anyway.”
She added:
“A lot of people had a lot to lose, so you don’t speak up when you have a lot to lose. But [our boss] felt so comfortable that that was not something that he had a problem with. [He thought], ‘I can do whatever I want to her in public with her boyfriend standing there.’”
WTF.
So disturbing! And this is just one of many gross stories these performers have…
As Perezcious readers likely know, Hilarie, Sophia, and Bethany were among 18 former female cast and crew members from the CW teen drama who accused the screenwriter of sexual harassment in November 2017. Shortly after, 25 female cast and crew from E!‘s The Royals released a similar statement, leading to Mark getting removed as the showrunner.
We’re all here for them spilling the tea now! We can’t believe the kind of BS they had to put up with on set!
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