Mischa Barton Confirms 'Complicated' Off-Screen Romance with Ben McKenzie 'Right out of the Gate' onThe O.C.

Mar. 15, 2025

Mischa Barton; Ben McKenzie.Photo:Franziska Krug/Getty Images;  Rob Kim/WireImage

Franziska Krug/Getty Images;  Rob Kim/WireImage

Mischa Bartonis finally setting the record straight on the nature of her off-screen relationship withBen McKenzie.

Barton was just 17 when she made her debut as Marissa onThe O.C.alongside McKenzie, who was 25 at the time and played her romantic interest Ryan. Their romance wasn’t “just on screen,” though, Barton, 38, admitted onCall Her Daddyon Wednesday. “It was kind of complicated for me.”

“I went into that a virgin, a kid, really feeling like I needed to grow up quickly,” she recalled of her early days on the hit Fox series, where she was the youngest cast member. “Acting with people older than me was a bit like,Oh wow. They know what they’re doing.And there’s gonna be relationships on this show and you’re gonna need to play that part,and I didn’t feel really ready for that ‘cause I was always a really late bloomer in school and I hadn’t really dated.”

Barton said she had “no idea what I was doing, really. So I felt like I needed to catch up I think a lot of the time.”

Warner Bros Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock

The age gap with her costars “was a bit tricky for everyone,” she continued. “I was experiencing all my firsts and I was so young and my mom would be on set and … I just needed a lot more attention in that sense.”

“It was a lot of my firsts, let’s put it like that. And that kind of really separated me, a little, from them, in the sense that I wasn’t out there living on my own in L.A. yet,” she said of her life compared to those of her costars, includingRachel Bilson,Adam BrodyandMelinda Clarke.

Her off-screen relationship with McKenzie, now 45, was her “first,” she added. “And I had no idea what I was doing.”

“I think that kind of set things off on the wrong foot, too, because it was like – you know people hook up on these shows and whatever, these things happen, but it was – we threw ourselves all into it very fast.”

ctors Benjamin McKenzie and Mischa Barton arrive at “The O.C.” kickoff party at the Viceroy on July 29, 2003 in Santa Monica, California.Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Once she and McKenzie (who is now married toMorena Baccarin) went their separate ways, things got “tricky,” because they had gotten together “right out of the gate” on the early days of the show.

“I felt overwhelmed and not ready for any of that,” she recalled. “I remember they were like, ‘Mischa’s disappeared with Ben and she’s only 17 ½, 18,’ and the producers went to my parents and were like — it was kind of a whole ordeal.”

PEOPLE has reached out to McKenzie for comment.

Barton’s three-season run on the show felt more like “seven years,” she added, as it was all “crammed into this tiny little space” — and starting off dating her costar didn’t exactly help.

“That’s in the very beginning of the show before we’re even halfway through a season, so there was a lot going on there. That show … so much happened in three seasons.”

Mischa Barton, Benjamin McKenzie The OC - 2003.Warner Bros Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock

Barton has previously said that her time onThe O.C.“wasn’t the most ideal environmentfor a young, sensitive girl who’s also been thrust into stardom to have to put up with,” as she toldE! Newsshe dealt with “bullying” behind the scenes and “felt very unprotected.”

She also opened up aboutfeeling “pressured” to lose her virginity during her time on the showin a candid essay forHarper’s Bazaar U.K.in 2021, where she wrote that she felt “like a fraud” playing her character, who she described as “fast and loose,” while she was “still a virgin.”

“The kids in the show were quintessential rich, privileged American teenagers drinking, taking drugs, and of course having sex. I knew it was important to get this thing — my virginity — that was looming over me, the elephant in the room if you will, out of the way,” Barton recalled of the role she started playing at 17.

Kevin Winter/Getty

In recent months, though,she’s reconnected with many of her former castmates.

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The O.C.can be streamed on Hulu and Max.

source: people.com