Hallmark Alum Opens Up About Unsettling Firing: ‘There Was a Sense of Betrayal’

Hallmark/Heavy Hallmark alums were awkwardly fired from a hit TV show.

A Hallmark alums recently shared that she and another Hallmark star encountered a very awkward and unsettling time when they were fired from their hit TV show. According to her recounting, they didn’t even find out until everyone else was celebrating the show’s renewal.

The Stars Found Out They Were Fired While Filming New Episodes for the Show

Hallmark alums Hilarie Burton and Chad Michael Murray were let go from “One Tree Hill” in a very awkward way that felt like a “betrayal,” Burton shared during an episode of her podcast called “Drama Queens,” as Us Magazine originally reported.

Burton said that she and Murray found out they weren’t returning to “One Tree Hill” on the day they were filming their Flaming Amy’s flashback episode. They were filming nostalgic moments and had no idea that those scenes were preparing for their characters to exit the show.

“We were all in contract negotiations at this point except me,” Burton recalled. “I had never gotten a phone call from anybody, and so they’re making offers to everybody and everyone was trying to hold the line. And all they needed were a couple people to sign on in order for the show to come back, and Chad and I never even got phone calls.”

So on that particular day, Burton said, they had filmed all the present-day scenes and most of the flashback scenes for a new episode. The producer suddenly stood up and asked everyone to pause what they were doing so he could announce that the show was returning for its seventh season.

“And Chad looks at me and he’s like, ‘Have you even gotten an offer?’ I was like no, and he’s like, ‘I haven’t gotten an offer,'” she shared. “And so … everyone around us is hugging and high-fiving. I mean, it felt like balloons were dropping from the ceiling… And he and I just kind of sat there and we knew it was coming.”

She said it was a rough moment.

“He and I were the highest paid actors on the show, and … we were on the chopping block,” she said.

Burton recalled asking if their bosses could come to the set and talk to them, and they refused.

“They would not come speak to us, and instead they took other actors out to dinner that night to celebrate,” she said. “And so Chad and I wrap work … and you know, there’s a sense of betrayal because you’re like, huh, okay, cool, we didn’t hold the line, and so we’ll go be the expendable ones.”

She said filming the last couple episodes that season was really hard.

“You just look at everyone around you and you’re like, I don’t know what relationships are real, and I don’t know which ones are performative, and who’s used me and who actually loves me?” Burton said. “And so that was that was hard.”

In a 2022 interview with People, Murray said that he still doesn’t watch “One Tree Hill” because it’s just “too hard.”

“It’s a section of my life that I deleted,” he said.

Burton Left Hallmark After a Disagreement About Diversity

Burton hasn’t been a part of Hallmark since before the network moved toward greater diversity. In fact, she originally left the network because she was pushing for more diversity in their movies. In 2019, she shared on Twitter that she left a Hallmark job that January because she insisted the movie include diverse casting, including an LGBTQ character and an interracial couple. She said she was polite about it, and she was told to “take it or leave it,” so she left.

As for Murray, he hasn’t starred in a Hallmark movie recently. He and Cindy Busby were in a 2021 Christmas movie together that aired on Lifetime, and his last Hallmark movie was also in 2021. Then in 2023, he and Merritt Patterson starred in “Twas the Text Before Christmas” for Great American Family. He also stars in the TV series “Sullivan’s Crossing.”

READ NEXT: Kavan Smith Reveals WCTH Storyline That ‘Kind of Pissed Me Off’