‘One Tree Hill’ Actresses Claim They Were Threatened into Maxim Shoot

One Tree Hill stars Hilarie Burton and Sophia Bush claim that show creator Mark Schwahn threatened them into doing a racy Maxim cover shoot.

In a recent episode of the Drama Queens podcast, Burton and Bush said Schwahn threatened and shamed them into doing the Maxim cover shoot in an effort to bring more male viewers to the audience.

Meanwhile, their co-star Bethany Joy Lenz said she was told she couldn’t be a part of the shoot because she was “too fat.”

The One Tree Hill stars claimed that they were told male viewership “skyrocketed” after the show included a scene in which a female character got her “ass kicked” by a male character, causing the show’s production to think: “Maybe we should do more [violent scenes],” and “maybe we should make the girls do Maxim and tell them they’ll get fired if they don’t.”

Bush said her career was then threatened after she initially turned down the Maxim cover shoot.

“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, forever,'” Bush said.

Burton then claimed that she was “pulled into the production office” and told, “Look, all the other shows have been on the cover of every single magazine, and no one wants you guys. No one wants you. And you finally have someone that wants you, and you’re really going to turn your nose up at that?”

Burton also claimed that Schwahn showed up at the Maxim shoot and gifted her an iPod with songs that he thought she might like — a move the actress claims was made in an effort to offend her co-stars.

“He wanted Sophia to see it, to put her in her place, and he wanted Danneel [Ackles] to see it, because he was trying to make her jealous,” Burton said. “We had all been pitted against each other in different ways.”

Lenz then said that she was told she couldn’t be a part of the photo shoot because she was considered “too fat.”

“They told me that they didn’t come to me because I was too fat,” Lenz said. “And I wasn’t a ‘hot girl’ on the show anymore.”

At that point, Bush recalled, “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?’ And they go, ‘Well she said no, so you have to say yes.'”

“They told us that you said, ‘I absolutely will not do it,’ and Maxim said, ‘It’ll still work if it’s a group of the girls, if it’s just the three, but any less than three, then we don’t have the cast.’ So they basically said, ‘Sorry, she said no first, so you can’t.'”

“They scapegoated you to tell the three of us we couldn’t say no,” Bush added.

Lenz went on to say that the narrative of her being “fat” and not one of the “hot girls” later transpired on the show, with her character being referred to as “a fat girl with a little head” in a later episode.

“From that point forward, I started getting treated like, ‘Just put Joy in the category of middle-age mom, and we’re gonna do the sexy stuff with everybody else,'” Lenz said, adding that she was later replaced in that role by Ackles.

This is not the first time Schwahn has been accused of bad behavior. In 2017, the female stars of One Tree Hill, as well as television writer Audrey Wauchope, accused Schwahn of sexual misconduct.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.