‘Tis the season for bringing people together and Lifetime is doing all of us One Tree Hill fans a solid by reuniting OTH stars Hilarie Burton (who played Peyton Sawyer) and Tyler Hilton (who played Chris Keller) on our TV screens in the movie A Christmas Wish.
The two are no strangers to working together. On October 27, Tyler shared a series of photos of himself and Hilarie’s on-screen timeline together. “15 years ago today, my first episode of OTH aired. Thank God I had my theme partner for life there to help me out, @hilarieburton. Hapily resigned to the fact that we’ll be on screen together til we’re 80,” he wrote. He also revealed that their latest movie will feature some new songs from Tyler.
Besides OTH, Hilarie and Tyler have also starred in Christmas on the Bayou in 2013 and The Christmas Contract in 2018, both of which featured other OTH alums, just like A Christmas Wish will.
Lee Norris (Mouth McFadden), Antwon Tanner (Antwon “Skills” Taylor), Barbara Alyn Woods (Deborah Scott), and Colin Fickes (Jimmy Edwards) will all make appearances in A Christmas Wish.
Speaking to HollywoodLife about bringing the OTH crew back together, Hilarie said, “It’s really empowering. I think everyone knows now that some stuff went down on One Tree Hill that wasn’t cool, and so to take the narrative back and to say, ‘Hey, we are going to work together and it’s going to be on our terms. And we’re going to make stuff that feels nice and is good for the whole family and is good for women.’ That’s a really empowering feeling.”
“[Lifetime] have been a natural home for us to kind of take that narrative back and say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to make content. It’s going to be nostalgic for our fan base, but it’s also going to be new and fun and lighthearted.’ You can tell that we’re having a good time,” she added.
Apparently, we have Hilarie and Tyler to thank for the sheer number of OTH stars in the cast. “We seriously just sit on our phone and go through and see like who is up for it,” Hilarie told HollywoodLife. Tyler added, “At one point, there was a part that still hadn’t been cast. She and I were just sitting in our cast chairs just texting actors we knew and saying like, ‘Hey! You want to come out to Louisiana next week and just be in this movie?’”
“What’s nice is that everybody wanted to do it. It just became a matter of like, ‘Oh, I’m shooting this other thing,’” said Hilarie.
Also starring in A Christmas Wish is Tyler’s wife, Megan Park, who plays Hilarie’s sister.
In the film, Hilarie plays Faith who writes her Christmas wish (to experience true love) on a slip of paper and drops it in a wooden wishing box as part of the town’s annual tradition to write down one’s “true heart’s desire”. The next day she meets the “handsome and eligible” Andrew (Cristian de la Fuente). However, as Christmas nears, Faith begins to wonder if her wish is actually leading her to her best friend Wyatt (played by Tyler).
Watch the A Christmas Wish trailer.
