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The second season of One Tree Hill left viewers on the edge of their seats as the show’s villain, “Dan,” played by Paul Johansson, is trapped in his burning car dealership at the hands of someone he pushed too far.
But who tried to kill “Dan Scott”? According to Bethany Joy Lenz, Hilarie Burton, and Sophia Bush, former cast members and hosts of Drama Queens, the show’s creators wanted the audience to think it could have been anyone.
“Do you guys remember when we were filming this whole who killed 'Dan' thing, how obsessed our bosses were about creating the same type of energy around our show that Dallas had?” Burton asked. “It felt like an episode of ‘Clue.’”
Season three starts off exactly where the previous season ended but doesn’t rush to show fans whether “Dan” survives. As the episode progresses, shots of a blazing dealership are scattered between scenes. The hosts said the fire was really talked up on set and a lot of production went into burning down Dan Scott Motors.
“The build-up to this fire, they were like ‘Guys you will never see anything like it for the rest of your careers,” said Morgan. “Looking back now, it was just a fire.”
“I just remember being amped to stand in that parking lot because we were like ‘Oh there’s something to do!’” said Bush.
The three drama queens of One Tree Hill said the fire took so much time to set up and shoot that production on the rest of the episode was fast tracked. Between what they can remember and what is shown on screen, the actors said the episode was block shot in order to catch up on time lost shooting the dealership fire.
“Block shooting is when you take everything that is in one location (and facing the same direction) in the whole episode and you film it all at once,” explained Lenz. “You just face the same direction and everyone in that scene will file in and do their scene in that direction.”
Hear more stories about filming One Tree Hill on Drama Queens, a weekly podcast hosted by the show’s leading ladies. “Unbreak My Heart” has all of the juicy secrets behind the season three premiere and can be found on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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