One Tree Hill actresses Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton claimed they were armed to do their Maxim shoot in 2006 during the show.
Their co-star Bethany Joy Lenz added that she was told she was not appearing in the magazine with her colleagues because she was “too fat”.
The women leveled the allegations against their former bosses in a new episode of their One Tree Hill podcast re-watching Drama Queens this Monday.
Five years ago, the three actresses joined a group of cast and crew who signed an open letter accusing One Tree Hill creator Mark Schwahn of sexual harassment.
Looking back: Sophia Bush (centre) and Hilarie Burton (left) claimed they were armed to do their Maxim 2006 shoot with co-star Danneel Harris Ackles (right)
The cover featured Bush and Burton alongside their co-star Danneel Harris Ackles, in a cross-promotion tied to an episode of One Tree Hill where Burton’s character Brooke takes on Rachel, the character of Ackles, for a Maxim cover of “Hometown Hotties.”
Their new podcast episode claimed that as the filming of Maxim approaches, the minds behind the show are keen to grow its male audience.
Bush said ‘we were told we had to do [Maxim], and I — because Brooke had been so sexualized on the show, and the whole idea of this hometown hottie was Rachel’s story, I was like, ‘Look, if the girls want to do it, that’s ‘it’s great. I do not know.”‘
She said she informed the brass: “‘Like I went into battle trying to get Brooke less involved in this thing that you tried to force on me. I do not want to do it. ” “
Nowadays: Burton (left), Bush (right) and their former co-star Bethany Joy Lenz (center) made the allegations on their new podcast; they are all pictured together in september
Bush said, “I was literally told, ‘If you’re not going to shoot this cover with your co-stars, we guarantee you’ll never be released for a press day, a movie, an event, any of your charities. We will keep you here forever.
While Lenz wondered where Bush’s manager or attorney was when negotiations were underway, Burton gloomily referred to the “leverage” their bosses had.
“I remember being lured into the production office,” Burton said, “and sitting on the floor while our boss was on the couch as we were given this kind of very friendly soft talk that was, “Look, every other show has been on the cover of every magazine and nobody wants you guys. Nobody wants you.
According to Burton, he was told, “‘And you finally have someone who wants you and you’re really going to turn your nose up at that?'”
They were as they were: Bush, Lenz and Burton are pictured together in a commercial shot for the show during its run, which ran from 2003 to 2012
She noted that ‘we’ve been on the bubble every year, and we’ve been assured that Maxim has just been bought by a new parent company and they’re now British owned – so they’re grading the joint – and that it was mainly run by women.’
Burton said of the girlie magazine offer that “we’ve been saying no to this for years, for years!” But it was more like, “Nobody else wants you. The studio wants to cancel your show. If you don’t start generating buzz and attracting these male numbers, then we’re dead and all your friends are gonna lose.” their work.”‘
“And it will be your fault,” Bush added, explaining that their employers might keep her on set in a punitive way even on the days she wasn’t supposed to shoot by reserving her for other work-related commitments, like wardrobe fittings.
“It was such a deep threat,” Bush said, “and a threat to love being able – honestly, to even have the ability to escape for a weekend from a place where, at this point, like this season, I let all my chances got.’
All together now: Lenz, Bush and Burton are all pictured at FYE in New York at an autograph event for One Tree Hill fans in 2005
She said, “I would come to work and do my job and then I wanted to hang out. I wanted to go home, I wanted to be with my family, I wanted to be with my friends. I didn’t want to be on our set. It was not a safe place for me.
She admitted to having ‘conflicting feelings’ about the cover at the time, complicated by how ‘beautiful’ and how ‘awesome’ she thought Ackles and Burton looked on set ‘and it should be so much fun but it’s miserable because we didn’t choose it”. ‘
Burton, who previously alleged on Variety that Schwahn considered her “his muse” and kissed her without consent more than once, said in the new podcast episode that he showed up on set of the shoot of Max.
“And he put on a show giving me a present in front of Sophia and Danneel,” Burton said. “It was an iPod that he had loaded with music that he thought was applicable to me, and he wanted Sophia to see it to put it back in its place and he wanted Danneel to see it because he was trying to to make jealous.”
Allegations: Five years ago the three actresses joined a cast and crew group who signed an open letter accusing One Tree Hill creator Mark Schwahn (pictured in 2015) of sexual harassment
Bush recalled seeing Burton “burning with discomfort” and Burton shared how “embarrassed” she felt about the spectacle unfolding in front of her co-stars.
Lenz then claimed that she was told that Ackles had been selected to replace her on the set of Maxim due to Lenz’s weight.
“They told me they weren’t coming to me because I was too fat and I just wasn’t like, I wasn’t the sexy girl, I wasn’t like the sexy girl anymore in the series,” she said.
Her co-stars were flabbergasted by Lenz’s bombshell, and Burton exclaimed, “Joy, they told us they asked you out and you said no!”
Flashback: Burton, who is pictured in 2006, previously alleged to Variety that Schwahn considered her ‘his muse’ and kissed her without consent more than once
With growing fury, Bush added that “when I said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ I was like, ‘But Joy doesn’t! She said no! Why does she say no?” And they say, “Well, she said no, so you have to say yes, and she said no first.”
Bush further claimed that he was told that Maxim wanted at least three of the show’s actresses to appear on their cover.
“So isn’t it crazy to realize that they scapegoated you to tell the three of us that we couldn’t say no?” she said to Lenz. “They threw you under the fucking bus. I was like, “Why can she say no and I can’t? I don’t understand!” ‘
In a lighter moment, Burton recalled, “Guess who wore pants in Maxim?” This guy ! Because I kept that pair of white jeans on for so long, because I showed up that day and I was a fucking asshole and like a kid, like a baby. And I was like, “I’m wearing pants!” I’m just, ‘I’m uncomfortable, put me in the pants!’
Quintet: Lenz, Burton and Bush are pictured between their One Tree Hill co-stars James Lafferty (left) and Chad Michael Murray (right) in New York in 2004
She said: “And so I kept these white jeans as a testament to, ‘I’m going to wear pants in Maxim and still look cute! “‘
“I mean, we did our best,” Bush said. ‘We had like cute vintage one-pieces and high-waisted bikinis and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to wear this corset that totally covers my belly, then these shorts, and it’s going to look like a pin-up girl photoshoot 50’s!”
She said with a laugh that “they did the thing that they liked to do to us when they tried to make our boobs bigger” and joked that “it’s like someone started to enlarge one of my boobs then went to lunch and forgot they weren’t done.
Bush recalled, “So literally I have like a normal sized boob and a huge boob and half butt on one side!”
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