One Tree Hill stars Hilarie Burton, Sophia Bush, and Bethany Joy Lenz have claimed that the show's producers forced them to do a Maxim cover shoot.
In a new episode of their podcast Drama Queens, the actresses revealed what went on behind the scenes of the show's fourth season, which aired in October 2006.
Burton and Bush, both 40, claimed that the show's creator Mark Schwan - who they accused of sexual harassment in an open letter in 2017 - threatened their careers if they refused to take part.
Bush, who played Brooke Davis, shared that she didn't want to do the magazine shoot because her character - who was supposed to be 16 on the show - "had been so sexualized".
Listen to the podcast episode below:Maxim was actually a part of the show's narrative, as well as outside of it. The magazine featured as part of a storyline where Bush's character took pictures of Rachel - played by 43-year-old Daneel Ackles - for the publication.
A month later, Bush was joined by Ackles and Burton on the cover of the real magazine, but was there reluctantly, according to the podcast. The actresses claim that the cover shoot was all part of a planned effort to bring in male viewers.
Bush said that when approached about the real cover shoot, she turned it down: "I was like, 'Look, if the girls want to do it, that’s great. I don’t. I have gone into 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 forever,'" she added.
Burton, who played Peyton Sawyer, also alleged that Schwan told her "no [magazine] wants you guys," and that "the studio wants to cancel your show".
"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,'" she said.
Bush then chimed in and added that she said "I don’t want to do this" and instead received a "profound threat" that made her want to exit the series.
"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," she added.
At one point, Joy Lenz, 41, said she was "replaced" on the Maxim cover by their other co-star, Ackles, and claimed: "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."
The other two actresses appeared stunned to hear this from Lenz - who played Haley James Scott on the show - and said they were told she was asked and had said no to being on the magazine.
"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,'" Bush alleged, realizing that they wanted to pit them against each other.
"They scapegoated you to tell the three of us we couldn’t say no. We weren’t mad at you but we were p***ed about it," she concluded.