'One Tree Hill' Actresses Say They Were Threatened Into Doing 'Maxim' Shoot

Hilarie Burton, Bethany Joy Lenz and Sophia Bush are speaking out.

The One Tree Hill castmates got very candid with some shocking claims about their Maxim photo shoot in the latest episode of their Drama Queens podcast.

During the episode, they claimed that creator Mark Schwahn threatened them into doing the sexy shoot.

Click inside to read more…

Maxim was allegedly part of an effort to bring in male viewers, including having the women in their underwear more and introducing an abusive male character, Matt Barr‘s “Psycho Derek.”

“I know they weren’t trying to solicit basement bullies on the internet, but they saw that a lot of young men were drawn to a violent assault of women and they went, ‘We should do more of that.’ Not, ‘Uh-oh, hold the phone.’ They were like, ‘Maybe we should do more! Maybe we should make the girls do Maxim and tell them they’ll get fired if they don’t,’” Sophia said, via Variety.

“Because Brooke had been so sexualized on the whole idea of this ‘Hometown Hottie’ and Rachel’s storyline, I was like, ‘Look, if the girls want to do it, that’s great. I don’t. I have gone to battle trying to make Brooke less of this thing that you guys tried to force me into. I don’t want to do it.’ 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 for ever.’”

Hilarie said she got brought into the production office while creator Mark told them, “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 gonna turn your nose up at that?”

“It was very much a, ‘No one else wants you, the studio wants to cancel your show,’” she went on to say.

“You don’t start to generate some buzz and attract these male numbers, we’re dead and all your friends are going to lose their jobs.’”

“At that time, I said, ‘No I don’t want to do this,’ and I was told I had to,” Sophie said.

“It was such a profound threat and a threat to being able to — honestly, even to have the ability to escape for a weekend, a place that at this stage, this season, I was leaving every chance I got. I would come into work, do my [scenes] and I wanted out. I wanted to go home, I wanted to be with my family. I wanted to be with my friends. I did not want to be on our set, it was not a safe place for me. This was such a threat to safety.”

Bethany Joy Lenz revealed that she was told her co-stars were shooting Maxim and had “replaced” her with Danneel.

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

“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?’ They go, ‘Well she said no, so you have to say yes. She said no first.’ They scapegoated you to tell the three of us we couldn’t say no… We weren’t mad at you but we were pissed about it,” Sophia recalled, remembering that she was told Joy didn’t want to do it.

Joy also recalled being treated differently after: “I started getting treated like, ‘Just put Joy in the category of middle-age mom. We’re gonna do the sexy stuff with everybody else. There’s nothing interesting about Joy anymore because she’s married’ and apparently, they thought I was fat and boring. That was it. I got kind of replaced with Danneel — who I love. It was so weird.”

18 women who worked on the show later came forward accusing the creator of sexual harassment, which he never responded to. Listen to the episode below.