The creators of The O.C. have revealed, in one of the grimmest and funniest oral histories of a once-loved TV drama, that they created Seth Cohen, played by Adam Brody, as a stoner in the show’s later seasons to hide the fact that Brody had grown incredibly bored of his role as the show’s star. According to series creator Josh Schwartz, who was featured this week in TooFab, “if we can write that he’s stoned, then we’re not trying to write around it.” Schwartz makes this claim in a new book about the program. That’s where the story “Kaitlin gets Seth hooked on pot” started.
The new book Welcome to the O.C.: An Oral History by Alan Sepinwall, which chronicles the ascent and subsequent—what Adam Brody would probably now graciously call—fall of the Fox smash, is the source of such admission. In the history, he acknowledged that he had been a little more forthright about his hatred for the show after its first season, stating, “I think I very much let my distaste for the later episodes be known.” I certainly made some overt fun of that, and I certainly didn’t hide it. I’m not proud of it, then. (Brody did say, “I was courteous to everybody. I got along well with the crew, I liked the filmmakers, and I didn’t keep anybody waiting. However, police accused him of being unprofessional for refusing to study the scripts for any sequences he wasn’t directly in.)
According to all of this, Schwartz and his coauthors decided to confront the problem that their star was acting as though he didn’t want to be discovered on set by having him high all the time. According to Schwartz, “Brody just changed his delivery and his investment in it.” “His style changed to such an extent that we thought we had to come up with something original to make up for it.” Well, how do we explain his lethargy on-screen?” we thought to ourselves.
Brody’s interest in concealing his contempt for those latter episodes hasn’t diminished over time, despite his apparent improvement in manners: “In terms of engagement as a whole, I’ll just say that they’re different shows, Season One and [the later seasons],” he writes in the history.”I’m sure I would have been much more engaged if the quality had been the same as Season One.”
