Hilarie Burton is saying thank you for Moira Kelly.
The One Tree Hill actress expressed her gratitude to her former co-star during the latest episode of the Drama Queens podcast.
On Monday’s episode, Moira was a guest on the podcast hosted by One Tree Hill stars Hilarie, Sophia Bush, and Bethany Joy Lenz. As they spoke with Moira, who played Karen Scott, mom to Chad Michael Murray’s character Lucas on the show, Hilarie took the opportunity to open up about something she’d been wanting to tell Moira for over a decade.
Hilarie shared that she hadn’t spoken to Moira since Hilarie’s last day on the show. Hilarie left the series after six seasons, and on her last day, she recounted how everyone was telling her not to leave. But one conversation stood out to her and really struck a chord – her conversation that day with Moira.
Hilarie began by saying:
“Moira, this is the first time I’ve see you since I left the show. I’ve wanted to tell you this for years and years and years, but in the last episode of the show, everyone in my wolf was telling me, ‘You can’t leave. You can’t leave. I didn’t direct because I didn’t want to be on set all day because it was so bad.
You came and you sat next to me and you started off by just joking, and you were like, ‘What’s going on?’”
She went on to share what Moira told her:
“[I told you,] ‘I don’t know what to do’ and you said, ‘Run.’ You started it off with like, a joke, and I was like, ‘Yeah?’
You said to me, ‘There’s so many chapters in life and this is just one. This is just one.”
She told Moira how much her words meant, and how grateful she’s been since then:
“I so valued your opinion of me and of our business and the way you prioritized your family over work, and that’s what I wanted – what you had is what I wanted… You lived it and we could just like, see it. I have wanted to thank you for that, honestly, since I was 26 years old.”
And Hilarie sweetly revealed how Moira’s words “gave me permission to go”, and how it changed her life. Getting choked up as she spoke, Hilarie said:
“It’s like, ‘Oh, my God. You don’t know that you saved my life.’ I don’t know what would have happened to me if I stayed. I met my husband [Jeffrey Dean Morgan]. My son [Gus] exists because Moira Kelly told me to run and so I did.
I just think about how different my life would be if she wasn’t that one person to give me permission to just go.”
Moira opened up to Hilarie, Sophia, and Joy about her time on One Tree Hill and what she wished she could’ve done differently, touching on the sexual harassment and difficult time the girls had on the show, which they revealed a few years back. Getting very emotional herself, Moira said:
“Hearing honestly what all of you young women had to go through—I don’t want to get choked up. If I could go back, I would have made my presence stronger there. I felt like, you know, being somewhat of a veteran, you were all so very young coming into this situation, there’s a part of me that feels like I let you all down.”
“If I had been more present, I would have been more aware maybe of what was going on, I surely would have said something. I surely would have done something, and so, if I could go back and do anything different, I would make my presence so solid on that show and I would have made myself so available to all of you.”
