How ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘The O.C.’ Contributed to an Increase in Shirtless and Sex Scenes on ‘One Tree Hill’
Fans who appreciated the increased shirtless and sex scenes in One Tree Hill have Gossip Girl and The O.C. to thank for it according to some of the show’s stars.
When CBS and Time Warner shut down UPN and The WB, they combined resources and formed then-new broadcast network The CW, which was home to massive shows of the 2000s that still maintain a cult following today.
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While speaking on this week’s One Tree Hill rewatch podcast Drama Queens episode, stars Bethany Joy Lenz, Sophia Bush and Robert Buckley recalled when their show moved over to the new network that was also home to Gossip Girl and The O.C. and how that contributed to their show moving forward.
“All those shows where it was so much, so much gratuitous whatever, like sex, sex everywhere,” said Lenz, who played Haley James Scott on all nine seasons of the teen drama series. “They just wanted to make sure that you guys had your shirts off on the beach. They wanted to make sure that somebody is naked in every episode.”
Bush, who portrayed Brooke Davis, agreed with her co-star, saying that she was grateful for Austin Nichols’ Julian Baker, who was the “sacrificial lamb” in a lot of the shirtless scenes.
“So I didn’t have to do it,” the John Tucker Must Die star said. “And also, ‘Good for you, sir.’ Like Austin was surfing every weekend. He looks so good, and I was like, ‘Someday, you’re actually going to love
that you have this.’ I hated when people used to say that to me. We were in our twenties and
they’d be like, someday you’ll be thrilled.”
Buckley, the actor behind Clay Evans (who joined One Tree Hill‘s final two seasons), recalled speaking with a director who worked on an episode of their show when they were on it together.
“I was asking him, ‘Oh, what did you do?’ And it was during the time when Julian was just sort of being introduced, and he was like, ‘Yeah, it was when they were introducing Austin as the new sex pylon.’ And I went, ‘What?’ I had never heard the term sex pylon, but I have to say, when I was watching that vignette, and he’s just standing there looking amazing, I thought, ‘You know? It’s a bit objectifying, but sex pylon, that shoe fits. It tracks.'”
One Tree Hill ran from 2003 to 2012. It first followed half-brothers Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan Scott (James Lafferty), who start off as rivals on the high school basketball court. The show also chronicles their friends and family in the fictional small town of Tree Hill, North Carolina.
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