Mischa Barton confirmed that she and her The oc Co-star Ben McKenzie had a “complicated” romance off-screen.
On Wednesday's episode of calls his daddy, the 38-year-old actress clearly confessed the nature of her relationship with her on-screen lover and love interest. She shared what it was like arriving on the set of the Fox series as the youngest member of the cast and said that she felt like she had to “grow up quickly.”
“I came into it as a virgin, a child, really feeling like I needed to grow up quickly,” she said. “Acting with people older than me was a little bit like, 'Oh, wow. They know what they are doing. And there's going to be relationships on this show and you're going to have to play that role,' and I didn't really feel ready for that because I was always a late bloomer in school and hadn't really dated.”
At the time, Barton said he felt like he “had no idea what I was doing.” She noted that she tried to compensate for being the youngest: “So I felt like I needed to catch up, I think most of the time.” Since she experienced many of her “firsts” and her mother was on set, things were “complicated” between her and her co-stars, including Rachel Bilson and Adam Brody.
“I was experiencing all my firsts and I was very young and my mom was on set and… I just needed a lot more attention in that sense.” And she added: “They were many of my first times, let's put it that way. And that really separated me from them a little bit, in the sense that I wasn't still living alone in Los Angeles.”
One of her “firsts” was with her love interest McKenzie, who was 25 at the time while she was 17.
“And I had no idea what I was doing,” she said of her relationship with the now 45-year-old actor. “I think that also got things off on the wrong foot, because it was like, you know, people get hooked on these shows and whatever, these things happen, but it was like that, we all jumped into it very quickly.” .
Because the couple had bonded “from the beginning,” things got complicated on set after they broke up.
“I felt overwhelmed and unprepared for any of it,” she told Cooper. “I remember them saying, 'Mischa disappeared with Ben and she's only 17 and a half, 18,' and the producers went to my parents and said… it was kind of an ordeal.”
Barton added that his three seasons on the show felt like a lifetime. He said it was like “seven years,” explaining that the experience was “crammed into this little space” and that starting a show dating his co-star made things worse.
“That's at the beginning of the show, before we even get to the middle of the season,” he noted. “So there was a lot going on there. That show…so many things happened in three seasons.”
This isn't the first time Barton has addressed how she lost her virginity. In a 2021 essay for Harper's Bazaar United KingdomBarton was candid about how she felt “pressured” to lose her virginity while on the show because she felt “like a fraud” being a virgin playing rich party girl Marissa, who Barton described as “fast and laid back.” “
