Hilarie Burton claims One Tree Hill creator was 'never held accountable' for alleged misconduct

Hilarie Burton has recalled Mark Schwahn's alleged abusive behaviour on the set of One Tree Hill.

On a recent episode of her Drama Queens podcast, the One Tree Hill star recalled a moment when the showrunner allegedly yelled at her for confronting him about "very aggressively" rubbing the girls' backs during filming.

"He just f**king launched into me. Like, 'How dare you? Don't you ever speak to me that way in front of people. What the hell are you talking about? I don't touch anybody,'" the actress recounted. "He was completely gaslighting me. I'm like, 'Dude, I'm friends with your wife. I'm telling you you have to stop.'"

She continued, "He said, I'll never forget it, 'You think we're friends? I'm not your friend. I'm your boss and don't you ever speak to me that way again.' He's screaming at me and those walls in the production office are paper thin. My brother, my boyfriend, my boyfriend's dad are all on the other side of these paper-thin walls and no one came."

After the experience, Hilarie said the show was "never good again" for her. She left the project after the sixth season in 2009, while the series continued until 2012.

Hilarie and her co-stars Sophia Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz were among 19 women who came forward to accuse Mark of sexual harassment in late 2017. He never responded to the allegations but was subsequently dropped as showrunner of The Royals.

According to Hilarie, he has quietly continued to work as a ghostwriter and was "never held accountable" for his alleged behaviour.

"Someone is giving him ghostwriting work somewhere, and there's this fear that we're going to walk onto a set one day and be confronted with that," she claimed. "I am making the commitment to keep talking about it so that other showrunners don't operate that way and so that he's got no safe passage."