Drama? Among the Drama Queens?? No way! In all seriousness, this sounds like a pretty serious feud brewing between the podcast hosts…
As Perezcious readers may know already, Bethany Joy Lenz recently teased her upcoming memoir titled Dinner For Vampires. As the cover reveals, the book is about Bethany’s “life on a cult TV show while also in an actual cult.” Cute. Implies she’s approaching a really grave subject with the good humor distance can bring. Nice.
But it was that very book cover which may have brought the growing feud between Bethany and her co-stars to a head!
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Fans couldn’t help but notice the same day she revealed her book cover last week, Hilarie Burton posted on her socials a quote from Pink:
“I don’t think imitation is the highest form of flattery. I think it’s annoying.”
— Hilarie Burton Morgan (@HilarieBurton) February 29, 2024
What’s that about? Fans think she’s shading her former One Tree Hill co-star over the book jacket somewhat resembling the layout of hers — a vintage-style oval photo, title big up top, author name on bottom. Hardly unique, but y’all can decide for yourselves if you think Joy took inspiration from her co-host.
The thing is, the real alleged friction between them isn’t about the book — that’s just the latest peccadillo poking at Hilarie and their third host, Sophia Bush.
On Thursday, DeuxMoi revealed on her Deux U podcast the tea she heard. Her source says filming One Tree Hill “was hard and traumatic for all of the girls” back then — something we’ve heard a lot about in recent years. But there was more interpersonal drama between the actresses than we knew! The insider went on to tease:
“Joy definitely had a big part in why Hilarie was not asked back to return after Season 6.”
Ooh! Are we talking Charmed level problems? In any case, the source says “it was worth it for all of them to work through it for the Drama Queens podcast.” Sounds great, right? Except it was tough to find common ground!
“They knew it would be tough since Joy has never really had the same, let’s call them values, as the rest of the girls.”
WHA?? What are they hinting at? If you’ve seen some of her public IG posts — and especially her private IG posts — you might have an inkling what that’s about. The insider says Sophia and Hilarie knew Joy had different religious beliefs than them, but the “intense” posts about LGBT and trans rights were too far for them! And that was even before Sophia herself got into a lesbian relationship! Per the source:
“The girls have tried to have so many conversations with Joy about basic human rights, and all I can say is, obviously Sophia is with a woman now and they all have plenty of queer friends, but Joy has drawn her line in the sand, and it’s really hard.”
In other words, she apparently has some homophobic and transphobic beliefs she — and her co-hosts — can’t get past! The source says it’s gotten tangled with the business as Joy refused to “do ad reads on the equality, inclusion, ally umbrella under iHeart” and “detached herself from a project” they were all going to pitch because she “didn’t feel right having to portray herself as a mother with a gay daughter.”
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Wow. Sounds like we’ve got a real Candace Cameron Bure situation on our hands. It’s not just that she won’t play gay, she won’t even play someone related to the LGBT community?? That’s some hardcore homophobia right there if true. Ick. To put it more explicitly, the insider says:
“It’s hard because all Hilarie and Sophia have ever done recently with Joy is try to bridge the gap between her and the iHeart sponsors, etc, trying to make everyone happy because a lot of Joy’s personal views on vaccinations and LGBTQIA+ do not align.”
Yikes! Apparently Hilarie and Sophia have both commented on some of Joy’s more upsetting posts. In response to one anti-trans message, Sophia passionately pushed back:
“Less than one percent of all humans in our country are trans, a fraction of them children. The idea that you know them better than their parents do, than their doctors do, that it’s your place to be outraged at their journey? It’s unconscionable. And this decision that you’re wiser than their own parents or medical professionals who assess them over time is what’s rooted in ego. You are not their parents, you are not them. You escaped a cult and yet you let a new cult mentality harm the most vulnerable among us instead of shielding them from harm. I’m sad, mad, I have loved you, and I hate this with my whole heart.”
Damn. Well written!
But that’s not all there is to the feud…
The source says all three women had talked about joining forces to write one big book together about their time behind the scenes of One Tree Hill, noting:
“At least that was the plan until Joy couldn’t stop running her mouth about how gay and trans kids shouldn’t have the same rights as others, and that is just not something Sophia and Hilarie could be involved with.”
But it was allegedly Joy who put the coffin nail in the trio’s version of the book by sneakily writing her own memoir about the show! The sources says she told her co-hosts her book was “going to be about what it was like to be in a cult and what it was like to leave the cult — she never mentioned it would be about the show at all”!
“So when her book news launched with an eerily similar cover to Hilarie’s and the tagline was basically ‘come read about cults but mainly some behind-the-scenes stuff about my teen drama’ it threw everyone for a loop.”
The source says Joy didn’t tell Sophia or Hilarie in advance, back when it was in the planning stages and could be changed — only when it was about to make headlines!
“There was no offline text before the news launched, just a ‘hey, this is coming and I know it was different from what I said it was going to be, here’s a heads up.'”
Damn. That’s a business betrayal, no doubt about it. A heads up doesn’t count for much when it’s too late to duck, you know what we mean?
We have to wonder if there’s any way the podcast survives, at least in its current state, considering this much bad blood between the hosts. What do YOU think, Perezcious readers??
[Image via MEGA/WENN.]
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