Bethany Joy Lenz Hopeful She and Hilarie Burton Can ‘Figure Out’ Their ‘Misunderstandings’

While appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast Wednesday, Lenz said she doesn’t have “any problem” with Burton and is hopeful that the pair can work out the “misunderstandings” that have apparently cropped up since they reunited for their OTR rewatch podcast, Drama Queens, in 2021.

“I love Hilarie,” Lenz, who played Haley James Scott on the show for its entire nine-season run, maintained. “I have always and will always and I don’t have any problem with her.”

“There have been some bizarre misunderstandings that I really hope we can figure out one day, but I love that girl,” she added.

Fans started speculating that there was trouble in paradise between the former co-stars after it appeared that Burton, who played Peyton Sawyer on the beloved teen drama, had unfollowed or blocked Lenz on Instagram.

Some fans believe Burton was upset that Lenz’s book cover resembles her 2023 memoir, Grimoire Girl, though Burton has never commented on the speculation.

The women teamed up to host their podcast with co-star Sophia Bush beginning in 2021, and had been co-hosting the show as a trio until July, when Burton announced she was stepping back from her hosting gig and Robert Buckley (who played Clay Evans from 2009 to 2012) took her position.

“We have reached the end of my behind-the-scenes experience on the show, and so I really started to question what I brought to this, but also how we keep that storytelling alive and important,” Burton, who starred in the series from seasons 1-6 said at the time. “And so, as we head into seasons 7 through 9, it was important that we introduced a new queen who could take over for me.”

The actress did, however, say that she was going to “pop in” to the podcast when she can. She introduced Buckley as someone “who represented the same things that I’ve brought to this show.”

Burton also said she felt like she could “finally take a deep breath” when her Drama Queens episodes ended.

“Every single week, it was, ‘Oh my God, I gotta tell that story. Oh, my god. We have to relive that.’ And there’s, obviously, like, so much good stuff that was in it,” she added. “But I would have to kinda psych myself up every week.”

Elsewhere during the interview, Lenz opened opened up about the cult she was in while filming OTH, which admittedly affected her relationships with her co-stars, telling Call Her Daddy host, Alex Cooper that things were “hard” with Bush while they were filming.

“We’re going through the motions of close friendship but not actually knowing how to connect,” Lenz shared. “It’s hard.”

She continued, “I think we were both approaching life from a similar way, but from opposite perspectives. She would have been much more quick to listen to my perspective and hear me than I would have been at the time. But I think fundamentally there was probably a similarity.”

Lenz said while she and Bush haven’t spoken in depth about this, they have discussed Lenz’s distance from the cast during the show’s run on the podcast.

“A little bit, not as much as I would have liked,” the Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!) author said.

“On Drama Queens, we definitely talked about our time back then and what was hard and how great it was to reconnect and the feelings of unraveling things that were so mysterious to us at the time. But no, it’s an ever-evolving journey. There are still plenty of people in my life that I… man, shame is a tough thing.”