Revisit the Soapy Teen Drama of ‘The O.C.’ With 9 Rare Behind-the-Scenes Photos

See Mischa Barton, Rachel Bilson, Adam Brody and Ben McKenzie in the aughts series that made them stars

By Abbey Bender September 22, 2025

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View gallery Left to right: Melinda Clarke, Peter Gallagher, Kelly Rowan, Benjamin McKenzie, Mischa Barton, Rachel Bilson and Adam Brody in 'The O.C.'

Left to right: Melinda Clarke, Peter Gallagher, Kelly Rowan, Benjamin McKenzie, Mischa Barton, Rachel Bilson and Adam Brody in 'The O.C.' © WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

With its charismatic cast and juicy plotlines, The O.C. was one of the most popular teen shows of the aughts. The prime-time soap, which ran four seasons from 2003 to 2007, centered on the romantic entanglements and upper-class dramas of a group of high schoolers, including troubled party girl Marissa Cooper (Mischa Barton), her popular BFF, Summer Roberts (Rachel Bilson), geeky Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) and lower-class outsider turned Seth’s adoptive brother Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) and their families in the privileged world of Orange County, California.

The cast of The O.C. became teen idols, and countless viewers were addicted to seeing what chaos the characters would get into each week, all while swooning over the on-and-off relationship between Ryan and Marissa and the adorable opposites-attract pairing of Seth and Summer. Over 20 years after The O.C. debuted, it remains a pop culture touchstone, so we’re taking a look back behind the scenes of the ultimate millennial drama.

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1. A moment with Mischa

© WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Mischa Barton looks pensive as she’s filmed for an episode of The O.C.’s third season. Her character was infamously killed off in the finale of that season, and the show’s ratings declined steadily following this turn of events, leading to its cancellation in season 4.
2. Chrismukkah

© WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Adam Brody’s character had a WASPy mom (Kelly Rowan) and a Jewish dad (Peter Gallagher) leading him to coin the term Chrismukkah to describe his interfaith holiday celebrations. Here, he wears a holiday sweater while filming a scene for a season three Chrismukkah episode with his onscreen love interest, Rachel Bilson, as Ben McKenzie looks on.
3. Preppy chic

© WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Marissa was a ’00s fashion icon and here, Barton wears a preppy pastel Lacoste polo as she stands with director Michael Lange during the filming of a season 2 episode.
4. Smiling on set

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Brody looks charming as he smiles while posing for a portrait on The O.C.’s set in 2004. The actor has recently been back in the spotlight thanks to his role as a handsome rabbi in the Netflix rom-com series Nobody Wants This, and in a 2023 GQ interview, he reflected on revisiting the show that made him a star, saying, “I watched five episodes and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it in a way I hadn't in forever because now all of a sudden I'm looking at it and it's 20 years old. I'm looking at it with a completely different lens and I'm seeing the person I used to be, I'm seeing this life we used to live lead in this world that used to exist. It's like looking through a high school yearbook and all the nostalgia that comes with it.”
5. Time for a touch-up

© WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Here, Melinda Clarke, who played Marissa’s mom, Julie Cooper, gets her makeup touched up during a break from studying her script for a season three episode. Julie was one of those characters that fans loved to hate, and Clarke brought some serious soap opera cred to the show, as she started her career in the cast of Days of Our Lives, and her father, John Clarke, starred in the classic soap for almost 40 years.
6. Lounging around

© WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

During the filming of season three, Barton lounges in bed with pages from her script. While The O.C. made the actress into a star, she had mixed feelings about her time on the show and the media attention she received, admitting, “I don’t think I was fully prepared for that level of fame. Because it has never been something that I have sought out. I really would much rather be anonymous.”
7. In between takes

BG043/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images/Getty

In this 2006 candid, Bilson reads a magazine during a moment of downtime on set. The actress, who dated Brody, her onscreen boyfriend, while on the show and later starred in the series Hart of Dixie, told Nylon, “I’m so grateful for the show . . . it gave me everything. I’ve never lost sight of that. It’s just been a blessing. I love Summer . . . Watching her grow throughout the series, I’m proud of her.”
8. Actor-director

© WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

Tate Donovan, who played Marissa’s unstable dad, Jimmy Cooper, can be seen here directing a 2005 episode of the show. He said, “The greatest thing to come out of The O.C. for me was I got a chance to direct,” but revealed, “By the time I started to direct, the kids on the show had developed a really bad attitude. They just didn’t want to be doing the show anymore. It was pretty tough; they were very tough to work with.”
9. A precocious showrunner

J. Emilio Flores/Corbis via Getty

Josh Schwartz was just 26 years old when he created The O.C., and as one of the youngest TV showrunners in history, he became a sensation. The precocious producer went on to helm Chuck, Gossip Girl, Hart of Dixie and the Dynasty reboot, among other shows, and here, he sits for a portrait on his creation’s luxurious set. In a 2023 New York Times interview, Schwartz mused that he and his producing partner, Stephanie Savage, “didn’t know anything,” saying, “We didn’t know the rules and we were making it up as we went along. That’s something that you learn from. But you can’t repeat it. You can only do that once.”

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