Hilarie Burton Recalls ‘Awkward’ Last Day on Set of ‘One Tree Hill’

Hilarie Burton is reflecting on her departure from One Tree Hill — and why she wishes it went differently.

On the latest episode of Burton’s rewatch podcast Drama Queens — which she hosts with her former OTH costars Sophia Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz — the women recalled filming the show’s season six finale, which marked the final episode for the Solstice star.

“Everyone was saying goodbye to me, but it felt like a funeral,” Burton revealed, adding that she was set up in a hospital bed with a prosthetic belly to film the birth of her character Peyton’s baby with Lucas, played by Chad Michael Murray (who also left after season six).

“I’m literally laying there like I’m in a coffin,” Burton, 41, explained. “James Lafferty comes up to the side of the bed and is like, ‘Hey, uh, have a good summer.’ It was so awkward and awful. People would put their head on my hair and say, ‘Well, I’ll see you next season,’ and I kept being like, ‘No you won’t! What are you guys talking about?’”

Burton said her castmates and crew did not believe that she wouldn’t be returning to the series, which she had starred in since its start. They even sent everyone home while she and Murray filmed their final scene because it didn’t seem like the end.

“It was an out-of-body experience, [like] being at my own character’s funeral, knowing I wasn’t going to see a lot of you [for years],” Burton recalled as she teared up.

She also shared that Bush, 41, gifted her a wrap gift that she kept “like a time capsule.” It was a ring with a note that called it “a 1920s piece, perfect for Paris,” referring to Burton’s Paris trip she took after her exit from the show.

“You were the only person who believed that I was leaving,” Burton told Bush, fighting to speak through tears. “Having Moira [Kelly] say it was really important, and having you believe it was really important. It was a bad time and you did something really nice in that moment. I’ve moved houses 8 million times and that has always stayed in the drawer next to my bed.”

Despite the “uncomfortable” situation Burton found herself in on the OTH set, she said looking back 15 years later, she can finally say she feels like she has closure.

“I think I can walk away with the narrative of Lucas and Peyton and feel so good about it in a way that I wasn’t allowed to for a long time,” she said, later admitting: “What it meant leaving was I could then take this knowledge and apply it in different ways.”

“One Tree Hill was grad school, where you just learn what not to do so every other set you work on can be pleasant,” she concluded.

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Since the series ended, several of the show’s cast and crew have come out to open up about inappropriate behavior they say they experienced from creator Mark Schwahn. Schwahn has never responded to any questions about the allegations.

The former TRL host claimed Schwahn was her mentor until “things took a turn” and he allegedly sexually assaulted her several times. Burton told Variety in 2017 that she “never wanted to be the lead female on any show ever, ever, ever again.”