Hilarie Burton is speaking out about a traumatizing experience while filming One Tree Hill.
Burton and her OTH costars Bethany Joy Lenz and Sophia Bush released a new episode of their Drama Queens podcast this week.
The ladies have opened up about their experiences while filming for the series throughout the podcast, and the latest installment focused on One Tree Hill Season 4 Episode 17.
If you watch One Tree Hill online, you know the episode focused on the characters going to Honey Grove to get Mouth (Lee Norris) out of jail.
The location for the episode was part of an event in which fans submitted videos about why their hometown should be on the hit drama series.
For the big reveal about which school and town won the competition, Burton said that her “boss” decided she would be the only one joining him for the reveal.
“The flight back from that is when he assaulted me. He assaulted me again in the car on the drive from Raleigh to Wilmington, He went straight to set and he told Danneel [Ackles] that he and I made out the whole time, and it was fun, and he was trying to make her jealous,” Burton recalled.
“So, she confronted me about it and was like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?'” Burton shared.
“So, then we had to go on this trip with him. And this was really, like, the last three months where my blood was boiling.”
“I didn’t know how to process it anymore and you can see it in the episode. You can see that I’m not there… I look like shit, I’m not connecting in any way.”
Lenz asked Burton about her decision to not report Mark Schwahn at the time.
“Oh, I did. I told all sorts of people. Honey, I told everybody,” Burton responded.
“Chad [Michael Murray] walked up and goes, ‘What are you doing?’ He said that to our boss in the bar.”
“He watched our boss grab me in front of a lot of people, and you know, Chad didn’t have anything to lose because he knew our boss hated him anyway.”
“A lot of people had a lot to lose, so you don’t speak up when you have a lot to lose. But [our boss] felt so comfortable that that was not something that he had a problem with. [He thought], ‘I can do whatever I want to her in public with her boyfriend standing there.'”
Bush said that Murray was “protected” due to being number one on the call sheet.
“He had the most power, so he could come up and shove our boss off you and get in a fight.”
“And I’m glad that he did. I want everybody to follow that lead,” Bush said.
“Thank God, Hilarie, that you had that moment with Chad, who was already so at odds with our boss.”
In 2017, the cast and crew of One Tree Hill wrote a letter accusing Schwahn of sexual harassment.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.
