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When One Tree Hill ended in 2012, it seemed like the perfect ending for the characters. Our Tree Hill Ravens had found love, career success, and community throughout their 20s, and then all ended up back in their hometown. But when it was revealed that there was major drama and inappropriate behavior behind the scenes from creator Mark Schwan, it made the onscreen fairytale feel more complicated.
Enter: The Drama Queens rewatch podcast. Bethany Joy Lenz, Sophia Bush, and Hilarie Burton started the podcast 2021 as a way for them to bond over their experience and reveal exclusive behind-the-scenes details. Robert Buckley ended up taking Burton's place after Peyton left Tree Hill, but there's another major moment coming up: the big finale. Feeling sad about the end? Don't be!! “You never say goodbye to One Tree Hill. That's what we've learned,” Bethany Joy Lenz tells People ahead of the podcast finale — and the One Tree Hill sequel series!
Here's what the One Tree Hill cast said about the Drama Queen podcast — and the iconic show.
Check out the latest 'One Tree Hill' reunion.
our one tree hill family ❤️🩹 pic.twitter.com/QwshqXJp5v
— naley gifs (@naleygif) November 10, 2025
The OTH cast reunited for a Halloween, Friendsgiving, Christmas extravaganza with a "Villaween" Halloween party on the last day of October that spotlighted some of our favorite villains. Friendsgiving gave fans the chance to meet the cast and watch the taping of the Drama Queens finale, and the final event, Tricmas, included a brunch, holiday-themed cocktails, and appearances from Chad Michael Murray and James Lafferty. It was an all-around festive time!
I'm obsessed with how much this cast loves each other. They can never pass up the opportunity to get a hug!
The 'Drama Queens' podcast hosts are grateful for the 'One Tree Hill' community.
The cast of One Tree Hill reunited for Friendsgiving by FWB Charity Events! pic.twitter.com/4pcNiOH1Tc
— OTHDIARY (@OTHdiary) November 2, 2025
The Drama Queens podcast is approaching the series finale, and will celebrate with a weekend-long event in Wilmington, North Carolina (where they filmed AND they have all their cast reunions!) on November 1 thanks to FWB Charity Events.
“The fans kept the show alive for so long in a way that eventually allowed us to come back and kind of wanna see what all the noise was about. Like, was this thing really all that it's cracked up to be?" Sophia Bush says in the interview. "In the most special way, they've given it back to us, and now we've been able to give them this podcast. We just have so much more fun, even [more] than we used to, revisiting the show on the other side of this. There's something about this project and this community that just feels so consistently generative and generous, and we're so excited to celebrate.”
“The live event that we're doing is part of the continuation of that,” Bethany Joy Lenz says. “As we watched the series finale, it felt very much open-ended in a way that we all knew that we were done with our job, but it didn't close things out in a way that felt like it gave you closure. It just opened the door to start it back over again and continue to live lives with these characters."
And they want it to continue!
Warner Bros. TV
Fans have the chance to see the podcast trio alongside Jana Kramer, Austin Nichols and Tyler Hilton, who all starred in the show. Hilarie Burton, sadly, won't make it to the event.
But the cast wants these live events to continue to foster that OTH community. "What we plan to do when we're in Wilmington is to give people that sense of, we're still moving, we're still moving pieces together, we're still doing this stuff together," Bethany continues. "So hopefully it won't feel so much like a quote-unquote finale as it just will another piece of the never-ending puzzle.”
And the podcast has given these stars the chance to process the show totally differently. “There was so much going on back then that it was just like this whirlwind of like, ‘OK, we gotta wrap the show. I gotta pack an apartment, I gotta leave,'" Robert Buckley says. "So there wasn't much of just kind of getting to sit with the experience and appreciate it. There was just so much happening."
The podcast also helped the cast "reclaim" the series.
Warner Bros. TV
Not only was the series hyped up by fame and popularity, but it's also an incredibly emotional show to watch — and I'm sure it was even more emotional to film. “It's almost hard to feel the weight of the emotion of everything that we experienced and went through,” Bethany Joy Lenz says. “There was still also so much of our own personal growth that we hadn't processed and learned how to deal with. So it took time to get away from what we had all experienced to really process it.”
Sophia agrees. “For us, the clarity that you get with time, with distance, in hindsight, we've been able to come back to this in this really gorgeous way," she says. "The thing I feel like is such a gift is the ability to just hold on to everything that's wonderful...I don't know that we would've had that had we not sat together on Zoom once or twice a week for a couple of years together. It's the kind of experience, reclamation, redemption, second chance I wish for everyone, truly take out the trash and just keep the gold.”
“We spent 10 years together, and it's an irreplaceable amount of time and all the memories and all of those things,” she continues. “There's a real privilege and a hardship...You go onto your next show and then you're on your next set with 200 people who you wanna invest in and be around, but you miss your old friends too. It's so rare that you get to go back while everyone is still moving forward. And I think that's what this is for us."
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