Decider Queue & A: Josh Schwartz Reveals The Moment He Fought To Get On ‘The O.C.’

Let us rejoice! All four seasons of The O.C. are now available to stream on Hulu. The trip to Tiujuana, the Spider-Man kiss, the surfers, the college years; you can watch it all right now. So, to celebrate, we spoke with the show’s creator, writer and executive producer Josh Schwartz. Join us as we take a trip down memory road, won’t you? Josh reveals a recent “stunning” run-in with teen girls, the big moment he had to fight to get on the air, and why he really wants you to remember Shailene Woodley on the show.
Welcome to Hulu, bitch.

DECIDER: Are you involved at all in the process of getting The O.C. on Hulu or does it just happen and then you find out?
JOSH SCHWARTZ: Yeah that’s Warner Brothers and Hulu executives figuring it out. I was definitely pushing for them to, I was wanting to get streamed, I would get a lot of people tweeting at me saying, “Why is the show not available for streaming?” So it definitely was important.

We’ve seen Friends get a second life because it’s streaming and millennials are all about it. Are you ready for a new group to discover The O.C. and is there anything specific that you hope they take away from it?
I am, I’m excited. We’ve gotten to a place now where if you are not streaming, you do not exist for a wide part of the viewing audience now. And I had a very specific run-in with a couple of teenage girls about a month ago who watched Gossip Girl all the way through, mostly streaming, and I said, “Well if you like that show, I think you’d like the show that I did before that called The O.C.,” and this teenage girl said, “Oh is that the show that the lady from Dancing with the Stars was on?” Which was stunning to me on multiple levels. One, Mischa (Barton) was 17 when we started and now this girl is referring to her as a lady. But also that because the show didn’t exist in terms of being able to get it online, they had heard of it and had not had a chance to see it. So my hope is that they will discover it now. What do I hope they get out of it? Hopefully it plays as a nice time capsule now of the mid-aughts and that they like the characters and the relationships and the music. And they can see that there’s more to Orange Country than The Real Housewives. We did come first.
Have you revisited any of it from reruns to streaming?
They staged this O.C. musical last year and they had a lot of clips and scenes playing throughout and that was my opportunity to get back in the DeLorean and go back to 2003.

When you look back at that time, was it a stars in your eyes, ideal time or more of a learning and growing pains experience?
Both. But I think at the time, you’re just trying to stay ahead of it. We were doing so many episodes and there was so much to do and you’re worried about ratings or fans, so you’re living crisis to crisis. The nice thing about this time having passed and people still wanting to talk about the show or stage a musical of it or stream it today, makes me feel like whatever the bumps and learning curves I had a long the way, the takeaway is that it’s a show that people remember and seem to remember fondly. For a lot of them, it reminds them of a time in their lives when they watch it. I think that’s the thing I hear the most from people, “I just moved out to California and this was the show that made me feel good about that decision,” or, “I moved away from California and I was homesick.” A lot of, “I just got into college and it was the show we would all watch in our dorms together and it brought me together with my college friends,” and obviously kids in high school were watching it together. I hear a lot of that group viewing or how it tied into their own moment in their lives. And for me it’s obviously a hugely defining moment in my life.
How did working on The O.C. affect what projects you choose to be a part of and who you choose to work with? Do you feel like you found your people on that show?
That’s been our core crew for a long time across the board. A lot of the editors went on to become directors and do other shows of ours. When The O.C. wrapped we went right into shooting the pilot for Chuck and that whole crew was on Chuck for that entire run. And then when Chuck wrapped, Hart of Dixie was shooting so they rolled into that with Rachel (Bilson). So there’s been a lot of continuity and overlap and when you find good people, you want to hold on to them. So some people went to Gossip Girl writer-wise and that shot in New York. Most of the crew is California-based, so we held on to everybody in our crew for well over a decade, on multiple shows.

Over the course of the series, what decisions were a gamble for you what did you have to fight for?
You’re taking me back! One thing I remember clearly was when Marissa and Alex (Olivia Wilde) had their lesbian affair. That came out at a time of extreme conservatism at the network. It was right after the Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson Super Bowl snafu and it was bananas how standards kind of rose up in that moment. We had to fight a lot for those storylines and those scenes just because people were very nervous about how it was going play. They were particularly very sensitive about the first kiss between Marissa and Alex and how long it could be and all this. It was a battle, and then when they aired the promo for it, all they hyped was the kiss. Like “The hottest kiss you’ll ever see!” and I was like, “Well this is a bit of a different way to go with it than what you were telling us a couple weeks ago.” So at the end of the day, ratings still matter the most despite FCC fines. But for the most part it was a pretty happy relationship between us and the network for at least the first couple seasons.

Speaking of Olivia, Chris Pratt and so many people have come out of that show and gone on to become huge stars – what was going on in that casting room?
Shailene Woodley! 7-year-old Shailene Woodley! That’s what I really want people to get out of the show when they watch it now, is how adorable Shailene looks in her riding pants and helmet.

Chris I remember particularly was a joy to have on the show. It was season 4, it was the last season and he came in and just brought such new energy and fun to the show. It kept everybody on their toes, it was fun and he’s a delight.
Olivia was awesome. Olivia read for the pilot and it really came down to her and Mischa. She was so good, but that Marissa character was so vulnerable and tragic and Olivia is so assertive and tough that it didn’t feel like she was quite Marissa to the network. But we loved her and so the first chance we had to put her on the show, we did.
Now that the whole show is on Hulu and people will be revisiting it, there might be even more reunion talk. How do you feel about that?
I’m open. For me it was a really wonderful and defining time of my life. The daily battles or creative challenges at the time evolve with a decade passing plus of fading into positive memories and I’m always happy to see everybody and still run into people. I saw a bunch of people at the musical last year and around the 10 year anniversary of when the show premiered we did quite a bit. So it’s really for the cast, when they feel like it’s something they want to do, I’m open. I think it’s a good memory for everybody now.
[Watch The O.C. on Hulu]