Rants & Reviews Interview: Mark Schwahn Talks Entrances & Exoduses on “One Tree Hill”

When an established television series loses two popular (and central) original cast members, there’s bound to be some nervousness about moving forward with new blood. That said, any nervousness about the new season of the CW’s “One Tree Hill,” which returned a few weeks ago without departed stars Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton, was quickly quelled after the first two episodes delivered solid ratings and, subsequently, a full season order from the CW. Jim Halterman talked with “OTH” series creator and executive producer Mark Schwahn about how time jumping brought longevity, how’s it good to be bad and writing shirtless scenes for the sexy group of men on the show.

Jim Halterman: Congratulations on the full-season pickup. Did you expect it so early?

Mark Schwahn: Thank you. I guess it was a surprise to get it that early but it wasn’t a surprise. We always plan on getting a full season and I thought we would this year too even with all the changes. I just felt like creatively we were all in such a good place. Obviously, the audience has only seen two episodes but our studio and our network had seen five or six episodes and I thought there was a real sense of enthusiasm from the powers that be. That being said, I think it’s probably the earliest we’ve ever heard about a full season and, being in Wilmington, NC, it was really nice to be able to give that gift to the crew and cast. Everyone is really excited about it especially in this economy and in Wilmington where there’s not a ton of films and television production right now so for the crew to have that gift well in advance of the holidays is really smart business on behalf of the network and studio.

JH: The four-year jump was definitely not something done on most shows. Was there a level of trepidation about whether the fans would follow?

MS: Obviously, you do something that the studio and network has no architecture for there is fear because it’s unknowable and there aren’t a lot of things they run into on a day-to-day basis that they haven’t done before. I can turn to Peter Roth, who has such a great career running a studio, and ask him what he did on the first “90210″ or what did you do in this situation and almost 100 times out of 100 times he’ll tell me, “I’ll tell you, we did this or we did that.” But nobody had ever jumped a show like this so there was trepidation. I like to think arrogance can bite you in the ass and it usually does and I approached it with an open mind. I said my instincts are telling me this is the way to go but I can’t tell you if it will work. If my fan base is more interested in these high school or college stories or if they’ve matured to the point where if we lose some of our younger fans we’ll gain some older fans because the show is now relevant to them in a way that it never was. You look at a show like “Grey’s Anatomy” and you see the fan base for it and I thought if we get a trickle of fans from that show that now feel that this show is telling stories about people in their 20s as opposed to high school a few fans will help whoever we drop along the way.

JH: Taking nothing away from Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton, has it been a blessing in disguise creatively this season?

MS: I would say yes and I would also say taking nothing of the success that we had with Chad, Hilarie and the original cast because we’ll always be indebted to them and that version of the show but, sure, creatively the writers are like painters and you’re basically giving them a new canvas and now you can work with different colors and do some different things that you like to do. Having the space to introduce new characters and having the story time to invest in their characters arcs, you have to clear some room somewhere to do that and I know there are people who watch the show for Lucas and Peyton and I was accused of loving that couple as much or more as anybody to a fault but I would say when you’re at episode 140 like we are and you’re looking for some adrenaline in your storytelling, to be able to say, “Here are some new characters, who are they, where are they going and how are they going to inhabit this world and be involved with the core characters,” it does sort of invigorate you a way in your storytelling.

Read the rest: Rants & Reviews – Interview: Mark Schwahn Talks Entrances & Exoduses on “One Tree Hill” | TheFutonCritic.com.

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