Falling for a co-star is basically a rite of passage if you're an actor in a teen drama. Just look at Blake Lively and Penn Badgley from Gossip Girl, Joshua Jackson and Katie Holmes from Dawson's Creek, Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray from One Tree Hill, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith from Glee — the list goes on and on and on. And, according to The O.C.'s Mischa Barton, it's even longer than we thought.
The O.C. famously had one love affair play out both onscreen and off between Barton's co-stars Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson, who portrayed comic-book geek Seth Cohen and the spoiled-but-sweet popular girl Summer Roberts. The actors dated while filming the show from 2003 to 2006.
But Mischa, who played Marissa Cooper in the show, dropped a bombshell about her own on-set romance 20 years after we first fell in love with The O.C, as she revealed that she secretly dated her onscreen love interest Ben McKenzie in real life. Barton said in a February 21 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast:
McKenzie portrayed the quintessential bad boy Ryan Atwood in the teen drama. He had an on-and-off relationship with Barton's Marissa Cooper throughout the first three seasons of the show until her character was shockingly killed off in a car crash.
The now 38-year-old actress has been candid about her experiences as a teen idol while filming the show, and she shares in the podcast interview how the age gap between her and her The O.C. castmates, including McKenzie, made things "complicated" for her.
At the time of the first season, Barton was 17 years old and the only actual teen appearing on the teen show, where the other young actors were all in their twenties.
The former child actress confessed that her youth made her feel pressure to "grow up quickly" on set, despite the fact that she had been "a really late bloomer in school":
Barton also revealed that she was the one to break things off with Ben before Season 1 had even aired, much to the chagrin of the older actor:
Mischa Barton left The O.C. in 2006, telling E! News that the heavily publicized show "wasn't the most ideal environment for a young, sensitive girl."
Though things clearly didn't work out between Mischa and Ben, you can revisit the star-crossed romance between their characters, Marissa and Ryan, on The O.C. with a Max subscription.