Interview on tvguide.com
In stark contrast to the tough, artsy and brooding Peyton Sawyer on the
CW's One Tree Hill (Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET), hearing Hilarie Burton's sweet,
Southern gab was a welcome change when TVGuide.com caught up with her
to get the goods on OTH's final episodes and major (but pending) change for
next season. Plus, we sought the scoop on the nail-biting continuation of her
on-screen stalker story and all the drama that comes with prom season in the
teen drama's first new episode in 10 weeks (!).

TVGuide.com: What have you been doing during One Tree Hill's break?
Hilarie Burton: Well, I'm down here in North Carolina and I've actually started
a production company [Southern Gothic Productions]. Right now we're in our
fundraising period for a movie we want to shoot in Wilmington, because
Wilmington really is such a gem. It's a great place to work, and to be able to
exist in this business outside New York or L.A. is really exciting because you
have a private life. I'm confident One Tree Hill is going to go on for at least
one more year, if not two or three or four or whatever, but after that it would
be really good to be self-sufficient and maintain a film community down here
in Wilmington. So that's the goal I'm working towards.

TVGuide.com: When we last left Tree Hill, psycho Derek was at Peyton's door
the night of prom. Will Peyton make it to the dance?
Burton: I don't know! But yeah, it's dramatic and fun and everybody should
have a good-looking stalker every once in a while, so I got really lucky with
Matt Barr, who plays Derek. He's so much fun to work with and we had a lot
of fun shooting that episode, so I'm glad it's finally going to air. Peyton gets
tossed around a little bit, so who knows if she's going to make it out....

TVGuide.com: Are we going to see any of those boxing moves she was
practicing in previous episodes?
Burton: I will tell you, I've gotten really, really strong — like Linda Hamilton
in Terminator 2 strong — so every little bit of training helps. Derek might not
know what he's in for!

TVGuide.com: Will Derek be in several returning episodes?
Burton: I can tell you that he's in more than one....

TVGuide.com: You filmed the prom episode in Honey Grove, Texas, as part
of the "One Tree Hill Films in Your Hometown" contest, right?
Burton: Well, not this first prom episode — this is just Tree Hill High School
Prom. But a little bit after the Tree Hill Prom goes down, we decide to go on a
road trip and that's when we end up in Texas, which was really fun. We also
get a little bit of a prom experience down there. So it's double the prom for
your money.

TVGuide.com: Does that mean the extras in that episode are real students?
Burton: Oh, yeah! It was awesome. We're twentysomethings playing high
schoolers and we've been in Wilmington for a very long time and getting in
the groove of doing our show and what we think high schoolers do — because
god knows I'm not in high school, and haven't been for years. So it was great
to go back to a real high school and have a real prom with real kids and just
touch base with where our characters are at and get that reality check. We
got to share those memories with kids who have been watching us since their
freshman year and now they're graduating with "us."

TVGuide.com: So, they're just part of your road trip?
Burton: Yeah, they have a pretty kickass prom that we get to crash.

TVGuide.com: Will we see Haley (Bethany Joy Galeotti) and Nathan's (James
Lafferty) baby before the season finale? Maybe an early delivery?
Burton: Ohhh, I don't know.... Babies are fun, right? You know what they say,
though, that the two worst things to work with are babies and animals. So, I
don't know how much we're going to see, because inevitably, every time you
take the kid out of the mother's arms, it starts crying. So yeah, Nathan and
Haley have a really fussy baby. [Laughs] I already had my fill of babies when
I had my story line with Jake Jagielski, so I gladly pass the torch.

TVGuide.com: Also, are Brooke (Sophia Bush) and Mouth (Lee Norris) finally
going to hook up or what?
Burton: Oh, I don't know. But you know, Mouth has become quite the
Casanova over the course of high school. He had a crush on Gigi and Shelley
and Brooke and Rachel.... He's kind of the hero of our group, the kid who
was hanging out on the River Court, not really talking to anybody and wasn't
necessarily an all-star athlete, but he was a nice one and I like to see nice
guys finish first. We're rootin' for Mouth.

TVGuide.com: What can you tease about the season finale?
Burton: Because it is the end of high school and we're putting that chapter to
rest, there are a lot of open doors as to what's going to happen to the kids of
One Tree Hill now. I think what we really tried to do is solidify the group,
because we all came into the show from different backgrounds — you had the
River Court kids, the popular kids, the athletic kids — and the overwhelming
story line of our show has been to pull everybody together. It doesn't matter
what clique you're in, you can find something in common with everybody,
and I really think that's the message we wanted to go out with. It's a time for
reflection, a time for talking to people you wouldn't normally talk to. And we
have a good party! End of high school, man!

TVGuide.com: OTH creator Mark Schwahn told me about his plan to bring the
show back this fall fast-forwarded to five years in the future. What do you
think about that? Is it a done deal?
Burton: I don't know if it's a done deal, but I've already started doing
interviews where I'm acting like it's a done deal, because I really want it to
happen. It's one of those, "If you build it, it will come" situations. We've been
talking to fans about it, like, "Yeah, we're totally coming back years later,"
hoping that the network will like the idea as well, because it gives us so much
more to do. We would get to play our real age, which is cool, and the one
thing that's happened over the course of our show is that we don't really
have any bad guys anymore. Who knows what's going to happen in the years
that we're jumping ahead?

TVGuide.com: That's what's so great, that you can do flashbacks to college or
wherever you guys went after high school.
Burton: Yeah, it really opens the door for us to experiment and play. We
have really, really smart viewers and I think they like the challenge of
figuring out mysteries, so if it comes back four or five years later and has all
these loopholes, that's a challenge that, as an actor, I'd like to take on. I
think our viewers would like to take that on as well. Everybody's into it
because look at any show that's gone to college....

TVGuide.com: That's what I was thinking. This is live-or-die here.
Burton: Exactly. We could follow the path of what every other show has done
and know what our outcome's going to be, or we could try something new
and see if it works.

TVGuide.com: Is there a specific date when you'll find out about the "time
jump"?
Burton: The [CW] upfront [revealing the fall 2007 schedule] is May 17, and I
think the official announcements are the day before. So within the next
couple weeks we should know.

TVGuide.com: But will you know then if the show will jump to the future, or
just if it's coming back for another season?
Burton: I hope we'll know [both], but if not, I can't wait to start asking all
sorts of questions [of the writers/producers]. "Hey guys, good to see you!
Now, about what I want...."

TVGuide.com: I'd rather see you guys jump ahead, because sending a show
like this off to college doesn't work very often, if at all.
Burton: And we've already done all the things college kids do anyway —
we've had the keg parties, we've traded boyfriends, we all live without our
parents already. It's kind of a been-there, done-that situation and I'm excited
at the prospect of trying something totally new.