Hilarie Burton tearfully credits Moira Kelly with giving her the strength to leave the toxic One Tree Hill

Us Weekly

Burton and Kelly spoke on the Drama Queens podcast for the first time since their One Tree Hill exits, which Burton later described as an abusive experience because of creator Mark Schwann. "I’ve wanted to tell you this for years and years and years, but in the last episode of the show, everyone in my world was telling me, ‘You can’t leave. You can’t leave.’ I didn’t direct because I didn’t want to be on set all day because it was so bad,” said Burton. “You came and you sat next to me and you started off by just joking, and you were like, ‘What’s going on?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do,’ and you said, ‘Run.’ You started it off with, like, a joke, and I was like, ‘Yeah?’ You said to me, ‘There’s so many chapters in life and this is just one. This is just one.' ... You were the only person that gave me permission to go, but I so valued your opinion of me and of our business and the way you prioritized your family over work, and that’s what I wanted — what you had is what I wanted. You didn’t have to say anything because you lived it and we could just, like, see it. … I have wanted to thank you for that, honestly, since I was 26 years old. … You set such an excellent example for all of us and you were safe.”