Hilarie Burton, Sophia Bush reveal they were 'forced' to do Maxim cover shoot

The One Tree Hill alumni are getting real about their struggles behind the scenes of the show.

Hilarie Burton and Sophia Bush, while speaking on their Drama Queens podcast, revealed that they were pressured into doing a photoshoot for Maxim magazine in 2006.

Meanwhile, their co-star Bethany Joy Lenz claimed she was purposely left out of the shoot as she was deemed to be “too fat.”

The actresses started off by explaining that the Maxim photoshoot storyline in the show was specifically written to “capture the male audience.”

They shared that the show creators’ aim was to land the actual cover shoot for the male magazine and they achieved it by writing the storyline of Rachel, played by Danneel Ackles, posing for Maxim’s Hometown Hotties issue.

"Look, all the other shows have been on the cover of every single magazine and no one wants you guys. No one wants you. And you finally have someone that wants you and you're really gonna turn your nose up at that?" Burton claimed the creators told her.

Bush said she protested against doing the shoot, but "was told I had to."

"It was such a profound threat and a threat to being able to — honestly, even to have the ability to escape for a weekend, a place that at this stage, this season, I was leaving every chance I got. I would come into work and do my job and I wanted out," she shared. "I wanted to go home, I wanted to be with my family. I wanted to be with my friends. I did not want to be on our set, it was not a safe place for me. This was such a threat to safety."

Lenz also recalled that after she got married during the show tenure, she was written as the “fat girl with little head,” and was told that, “they didn't come to me because I was too fat and I just wasn't a hot girl on the show anymore.”