Alexa, play Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be."
April 4 marked the 10-year anniversary of One Tree Hill's series finale and, in commemoration of this TV milestone, former Tree Hill RavensHilarie Burton, Bethany Joy Lenz and Sophia Bush looked back on one of the show's boldest decisions: An almost five-year time jump for season five.
While it may've been a controversial decision to skip over the Tree Hill gang's college years, the stars of the WB-turned-CW hit couldn't support the decision more. In fact, Lenz, who played bookish Haley for the show's entire nine season run, told Entertainment Weekly that she found the time jump to be a "brilliant" decision.
Why? Well, it allowed her to explore a "complicated space" for her character, who got married in her teens to Nathan (James Lafferty) and then became a young mom. "We both got to do something that we hadn't really been able to do on the show—up until that time," she shared. "So for an actor, it was really exciting."
Bush, who played uber confident Brooke throughout One Tree Hill's tenure, revealed that she felt similarly, calling the shift "cool."
"We were really entering an era where you almost never knew a group of friends that all went to the same college. It's just not a thing that happens," she said. "Things were different and it felt like we got to shed this old, impractical mold. Which I know is funny for people who did a show where a dog ate a heart to say, 'Well that wouldn't happen.'"
And, per Burton, the time jump allowed the actors to explore plotlines that more accurately reflected their real lives, as they were in the midst of facing "the conflicting emotions of being a person in your young twenties and thinking you're a grown up, but you're not really a grown up."
Though we're not sure any of these actresses faced a stalker nanny—shout-out to Torrey DeVitto's memorable season five performance!
Intrigued to learn more secrets about One Tree Hill? Be sure to keep reading!