Adam Brody Says He’s ‘Not Proud’ of His Behavior on the Set of ‘The O.C.’

Adam Brody is owning up to his behavior as a teen on the set of The O.C. The 43-year-old actor played Seth Cohen in the hit teen drama, which ran for four seasons on Fox. 

In the new book, Welcome to the O.C.: The Oral History, Brody admits to showing a real disinterest in the content after the show’s first season. 

“I was polite to everyone. I liked the directors, and the crew and I got on really well and I didn’t keep people waiting. I would never scream or yell at anyone, or say anything f**king mean,” Brody claimed in the book (per TooFab). “But I think I very much let my distaste for the later episodes be known. I didn’t mask that at all, and I’m sure I openly mocked it a bit. So I’m not proud of that.”

Co-star Benjamin McKenzie, who played Ryan Atwood, said Brody “was not shy about it,” adding that his co-star’s behavior put the whole cast in a “feisty, feisty mood.” 

McKenzie called the experience “a challenge” and “frustrating.” 

“I started to be creatively less interested. I blame myself for a lack of professionalism, and a disrespect to the work,” Brody admitted. “In terms of engagement as a whole, I’ll just say that they’re different shows, season one and [the later seasons]. Had the quality been the quality of season one, I’m sure I would have been a lot more engaged … I think the quality of it and my engagement went hand in hand.”

Series creator Josh Schwartz confirmed Brody’s assessment, saying, “By the time we got to season three, we were all burned out. We’d made so many episodes so quickly, and I think it wasn’t a happy set for long stretches of it. Quite frankly, everybody was over it at that point. And I was one of those people who was over it at that point. It had been a great ride, but it had been a volatile ride.”

Schwartz added that the writers even wrote in a storyline where Seth gets addicted to marijuana to explain Brody’s lethargy. 

“Brody just changed his delivery, his investment in it. His style shifted to such a degree that we felt like we needed to account for it creatively,” Schwartz shared. “That’s where ‘Kaitlin gets Seth hooked on pot’ took root. We were like, ‘Well, how do we explain his lethargy on-screen? And at least if we can write that he’s stoned, then we’re not trying to write around it.'”

As for Rachel Bilson — who played Summer Roberts and who was dating Brody at the time — she said his behavior put her in an uncomfortable position. 

“How do you balance that? Because you want to be supportive of the person you’re with,” she said in the book. “But also I’m a firm believer in always being grateful, and gratitude comes first. And I think there were probably times where that went by the wayside. You grow up, you look back, and you can realize when you’re young, you might behave in certain ways you wish you hadn’t.”

In real life, Brody and Bilson split in 2006 while they were still on the show together. In a March 2021 interview on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert, Bilson opened up about continuing to film The O.C. while no longer dating Brody. 

“We still got along really well. I had so much, and still do, love and respect for Adam,” she said at the time. “We went through so much together, being so young and everything with the show. And I’m so happy for him with his family and his beautiful wife and kids and everything.” 

Brody is now married to actress Leighton Meester. The couple share two children. Bilson has one kid, Briar, with actor Hayden Christensen.

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