Sophia Bush may play a doctor on Grey’s Anatomy season 21, but for One Tree Hill fans, she’ll always be the tough, clever Brooke Davis. In the years since the series finale aired on The CW in 2012, shows like Full House and Gilmore Girls got revivals but the teens of the small town of Tree Hill were left in the TV past.
In 2024, news of a One Tree Hill revival came out, and according to Deadline, Bush’s appearance at the iHeartPodcasts Awards/SXSW at ACL Live on March 10, 2025 included a discussion about why she realized it’s a good time to bring the heartwarming series back. I’m hanging on every word!
As fans of any popular ’90s or 2000s TV drama would expect, Bush explains, “We’ve been asked about bringing the show back for so long.” She continues, “I think for so many years, all of us said that would be a hard no.” There are two reasons she realizes a One Tree Hill revival is a great idea: the Drama Queens recap podcast and the fact that the show is “special.” She explains, “the podcast has given all of us this sort of opportunity to have a homecoming. And to get to analyze what was so special about it in the first place has made that more of a possibility.”
Whenever One Tree Hill is mentioned, the elephant in the room is the disturbing allegations against creator and showrunner Mark Schwahn. In November 2017, Peyton Sawyer actress Hilarie Burton told Variety that Schwahn allegedly harassed and assaulted her and female co-stars. A letter from crew and cast members says they “had to swiftly learn to fight back, sometimes physically, because it was made clear to us that the supervisors in the room were not the protectors they were supposed to be.” Burton also shared that Schwahn had once “grabbed” her while they were at a bar and co-star Chad Michael Murray stood up for her.
While I loved watching Brooke and Peyton Sawyers and their friends deal with love and friendship and family issues, it’s hard to separate this fictional world from these disturbing allegations. Schwahn created these characters, after all. But Nathan Scott actor James Lafferty put it best when he tweeted that the actors and crew members “embody the virtues of the story we were trying to tell.” As Bush said, One Tree Hill is “special.” Schwahn can’t take that away from the actors or the fans.
Bush also talked about how it’s “exciting to be at this stage in our lives where everyone gets to bring what they love to do to the table.” In the years since OTH went off the air, she and her co-stars have worked as producers or written books, like Bethany Joy Lenz’s memoir about being in a cult. This is a great point about the world of reboots and revivals. It’s easy, as a loyal and passionate fan, to want to see your favorite characters again, but what about the experience the actors are having? Reboots shouldn’t happen just because audiences want to see Lorelai and Rory guzzling coffee in Stars Hollow again (that didn’t work out so well). I’m more interested in a revival if actors have grown creatively and want to come back even stronger and better.
According to Deadline, the One Tree Hill revival “is said to take place 20 years after the original, following best friends Brooke Davis (Bush) and Peyton Sawyer (Burton-Morgan), who are now parents to teens and facing challenges not unfamiliar to what they tackled in the original series.”
Executive producer and writer Becky Hartman Edwards is credited for the revival, with Bush and Burton Morgan are set to executive produce. Danneel Ackles, who played Rachel Gatina in the original series, is also set to executive produce alongside her husband, actor Jensen Ackles, under the couple’s Chaos Machine banner. Bush praised the “amazing female leadership team” on the new show, which is the only way it should be.
Published: Mar 12, 2025 02:37 pm