Those of us who grew up in the 90s and the aughts, juicy teen dramas like The O.C. (and its reality TV counterpart, Laguna Beach), Gossip Girl, and One Tree Hill were pop culture fixtures — and thanks to streaming today, the storylines that left such an impact on our adolescence are not only readily available for rewatches, but are also reaching entirely new audiences. Retrospective deep dive podcasts, on the other hand, offer stripped-down looks at what happened behind-the-scenes, and the reality was often much darker than what we saw on screen. The latest such revelation comes from Drama Queens, a One Tree Hill rewatch podcast hosted by stars Hilarie Burton Morgan, Sophia Bush, and Bethany Joy Lenz.
On Monday, the trio discussed an episode that saw Brooke (played by Bush) take photos of Rachel (played by Daneel Ackles) for Maxim’s "Hometown Hotties" issue. The scene set the stage for Burton Morgan and Bush’s 2006 actual Maxim cover (also featuring Ackles), which hit newsstands a month after the episode aired. The problem? The podcast hosts say they were pressured into posing for the magazine. "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 recalled on a recent episode of the podcast, adding that she had previously “gone to battle trying to make Brooke less [sexualized]” on the show.
