‘One Tree Hill’: Hilarie Burton Says ‘Psychotic’ Exec Wrote Himself Into Hugging Scene With Her

Hilarie Burton is spilling more tea on her One Tree Hill experience. Via PEOPLE, the actress, who portrayed Peyton Sawyer on the first six seasons of the WB/CW drama, looked back at a particular time on the series on the latest episode of the Drama Queens podcast. She admitted to her co-hosts and former OTH co-stars Bethany Joy Lenz and Sophia Bush that their boss, Mark Schwahn, or “Voldemort,” as she said, made the decision to cast himself in a Season 5 episode after she had given him the silent treatment.

In “Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace,” Schwahn appeared as record store owner Max and an old friend of Peyton’s. Burton revealed that she “wasn’t speaking to him in real life, and so he wrote himself into the episode of me hugging him.” Lenz responded by saying that it “is so psychotic” and wondered how it would be if Shonda Rhimes or Aaron Sorkin cast themselves in their own shows. Burton then recalled when she received the script and how she tried to get it through her head that it was just “one day of work.”

Despite having her brother on set and her boyfriend’s dad directing, “it just wasn’t enough, so I invited my dad to work this day, and my dad came and stand 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.” Luckily, with her dad on set, Burton felt protected. She continued, “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.” 

Hilarie Burton previously opened up about the abuse and sexual harassment she faced from Schwahn back in 2017. She detailed his attempts to overly sexualize her character and how her fighting against it labeled her as “difficult.” Burton also claimed he kissed her on the lips against her will, inappropriately touched her, and spread false rumors about being in relationships with actresses on the show. The Drama Queens podcast has given Burton and her co-stars more room to discuss their time on the series, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. And it can definitely get ugly when looking back at those days, no matter what the context is. Or how long ago it was, because it clearly still sticks with them to this day.