Mischa Barton on her television comeback
Former “It girl” and The O.C. actor Mischa Barton opens up about being hounded by the tabloids, her troubled past and why she’s making a very meta television return.
Even Mischa Barton admits she was unsure — if not downright dismissive — of the job offer when it came her way last year.
More than a decade after leaving the wildly popular teen drama The O.C., Barton was still landing steady work.
She was also still a target of fascination for tabloid media and ardent fans who had followed her hectic reign as an early-noughties It girl just as closely as the chaotic, at-times worrying period that followed.
This time, it was MTV knocking at her door; producers for a sequel of its game-changing reality series The Hills were keen for Barton to join its cast members, most of whom were returning.
“At first I was like no, I don’t need that on top of everything,’” Barton tells Stellar in an exclusive Australian interview.
By October, she had changed her tune and signed on, setting off a flurry of headlines fuelled by one simple question: Why? Barton has an answer.
“I do think one of the allures to doing the show was the fact that there had been so much speculation and mystery around me. We’ll see if this clears that up,” she says with a laugh. “People will talk anyway, right?”
Barton would know. The now 33-year-old was already a seasoned performer by the time The O.C. premiered in 2003 and became an instant phenomenon.
At age eight, she was starring in off-Broadway productions before turning to film, where she had roles in late-’90s hits like The Sixth Sense and the beloved romantic comedy Notting Hill.
The latter took Barton back to the U.K., where she was born — in the same neighbourhood as her co-star Hugh Grant.
When Stellar points out that this month marks the 20th anniversary of Notting Hill, she replies, “I wasn’t aware, but that’s cool! I was very young. I have a lot of fond memories. People were so nice to me and Hugh was wonderful; he was so funny and outgoing.”
From the start, critics showered Barton with superlatives like “poised”, “natural”, “chillingly authoritative” and “hypnotic”.
But nothing quite prepared her for the adulation that would come her way when audiences seized on to The O.C., which traded on lasting global intrigue around over-privileged American teenagers and featured Barton as troubled Marissa Cooper.
Like Beverly Hills, 90210 before it and Gossip Girl after, the show became a cultural phenomenon.
It launched and revived the careers of its stars and put a new generation of indie-rock singers and bands on the map. Seinfeld brought us Festivus; The O.C. invented Chrismukkah.
Soulful, anxious nerds were heart-throbs again thanks to Adam Brody’s winning performance as Marissa’s friend Seth Cohen.
Teens wore “Free Marissa” T-shirts, the catchphrase “Welcome to the O.C., bitch!” entered the pop vernacular, and scenes like Marissa’s poolside tantrum and, later, her grisly death in a car accident, are still parodied and referenced today.
But perhaps its most pivotal legacy was to birth the iteration of reality TV as we now know it.
Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County was the first of its kind, created to showcase the real Marissa Coopers of the world, and launched a year after The O.C.; it was soon followed by The Real Housewives Of Orange County.
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Well aware of the impact they were having, writers for The O.C. even created a fictional parody called The Valley, which their show’s characters tuned into.
As Seth once wryly asked: “Why watch the plight of fictional characters when you can watch real people in contrived situations?”
They were, of course, making fun of Laguna Beach, which itself birthed a spin-off called The Hills.
Thirteen years on from The O.C., Barton is back on TV with former regulars and new cast members, including Brandon Thomas Lee (son of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee) on The Hills: New Beginnings.
“This is how things come full circle,” she says. “I mean, it’s very meta. So meta that you don’t want to think about it too much.”
For MTV, which has struggled for relevance in recent years, casting Barton is a no-brainer. And while reviving one of its signature series sparked a flutter of interest, her involvement ensured worldwide headlines and the nostalgic power she incites.
For Barton, taking part gives her a chance to press the reset button, perhaps pivoting long-held public perceptions of her.
It’s fair to say she became just as notorious for her escapades in the 2000s as she did for the role she played, because while the TV landscape was changing, so was the media’s.
The Daily Mail launched its online platform, MailOnline, in 2003 and bloggers like Perez Hilton, DListed and Just Jared became as influential and significant as print titles like Us Weekly and People — and a vicious new level of cattiness came with them.
Barton — along with her famous friends Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie and Lindsay Lohan — became well known for shopping sprees, wild parties, and messy encounters with the law, while the paparazzi constantly hounded their squad.
“You used to expect that kind of thing [to happen to] somebody who was incredibly famous — not so much new actors or It girls. It was bizarre. I was definitely at the forefront and I really got the brunt end of the stick,” she recalls.
“Because it was such a level of fame and it was 24/7 in a very aggressive way that you don’t really see anymore, like with people camping outside your house. You’d go to the store and end up in Us Weekly and the bloggers would come after you.
“It was a dangerous and exciting time. I’m not sure most actresses today experience it in the same way. Now you even the playing field with [your social media accounts], and people being more aware of what that kind of thing does to someone.”
Still, Barton isn’t resentful of the show that brought her success. “I worked with Neve Campbell [of Party Of Five fame] after [The O.C.] and we were talking about how you have to be so much more serious for people to separate you from the character you were so good at playing,” she says.
“But you realise as you get a little older, it’s OK, and that people talk about it because they loved it so much.”
And for her, The Hills reboot is both a homecoming and an opportunity for a comeback. “I took some personal leave to go back east to New York and really clear my head,” says Barton, who revealed in 2013 that she’d had a “full-on breakdown” and was placed under involuntary psychiatric hold by the LAPD in 2009.
“The industry in LA is a very tricky place, but this is my forte,” she says. “The aim now is to turn down the stuff I don’t want to be doing — and to really look at the things that are right. I’ve got a new team around me and I’m back seeking acting roles that are appropriate.”
Until then, she is happy to promote her stint on The Hills and pleased with the relationships she has built with her castmates, a few of who joined her for a birthday celebration in January.
Barton says she vaguely knew them already from the Hollywood social scene. But, she says, “These are friendships that are quite freshly formed. The show really [was] a bonding experience. You knew you were going into this together; nobody knew what to expect.
And everybody is a little older and wiser... Or so you hope.”
The Hills: New Beginnings premieres 12pm, Tuesday, on MTV.
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