Welcome to The Greatest Year in Pop Culture.
E!’s new anthology documentary series is revisiting the years that shaped entertainment history, starting with 2003.
Yes, it was the year that delivered Madonna and Britney Spears‘ iconic kiss at the MTV Video Music Awards and the year a then-engaged Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck starred in Gigli.
But 2003 was also the year that introduced us to The O.C., the Josh Schwartz-created show that skyrocketed the careers of Mischa Barton, Ben McKenzie, Adam Brody, and Rachel Bilson.
That’s right, The O.C.—executive produced by McG and Stephanie Savage—premiered on Aug. 5, 2003, centered on a young outsider named Ryan Atwood (McKenzie) who inadvertently joins a wealthy Southern California community.
“We’re always looking for new worlds to set shows in,” Schwartz explained in The Greatest Year in Pop Culture. “Traditionally, you might see Malibu or L.A. or New York City. Orange County, Newport, was the perfect embodiment of everything that was happening culturally in 2003.”
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Trailer: The Greatest Year in Pop Culture: 2003 | E! News
Not only did The O.C. influence fashion—Juicy Couture tracksuits!—and music trends—Phantom Planet!—but it also inspired several other series, including The Real Housewives of Orange County, Desperate Housewives and MTV’s Laguna Beach.
As Schwartz shared on Greatest Year, “I did have conversations with producers of Laguna Beach,” who confirmed they “would not be doing this show if it wasn’t for The O.C.”
“The show captured people’s imagination,” the screenwriter noted, “and created a curiosity that wanted to get interrogated further.”
So, was 2003—thanks largely to The O.C.—the greatest year in pop culture history? Watch the documentary series above to decide for yourself.
And if you’re ready to see how it’s done in Orange County, keep reading for a look back at these facts about The O.C.
E!’s Greatest Year in Pop Culture is streaming now on Fandango, E! Entertainment YouTube and E! Online.
(E! and Fandango are both part of the Versant Media family.)
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2. The first actor cast on the series was Peter Gallagher as Sandy Cohen, the patriarch of the central fam. C’mon, who could resist those eyebrows?
“We wanted to send a very clear message that this was a show as much about the parents as it was about the kids, and we had this acclaimed film and stage actor in the lead role, heartthrob himself,” Schwartz said. “And somebody who was a terrific actor who was going to ground the adult world with a lot of credibility.”
4. Chad Michael Murray also turned down the show to star on One Tree Hill.
However, they always knew they wanted to bring Wilde back and ended up casting her as Alex, Seth and then Marissa’s eventual love interest, in season two.
7. While Adam Brody made Seth Cohen one of TV’s most beloved characters, Schwartz initially did not want to cast him. “With Seth, we saw a lot of kids. And Adam, when he first came in…he didn’t bother to learn basically any of the lines for his audition scene,” Schwartz recalled in his Uproxx interview. “I was even like, ‘What scene is he doing; is this from our show? What is he doing? I hate this kid; get him out of here.’ And then we couldn’t find Seth and our casting director, Patrick Rush, was like, ‘We should bring back Adam Brody. I’m telling you, there’s something special about that kid.’ He came back in and did a really great job.”
10. While the show helped put bands like Death Cab for Cutie and Rooney on the map, and major groups like U2 and the Beastie Boys eventually reached out to debut their new songs on the series, there was one band that refused to let their music be on the show: Arcade Fire.
12. In fact, the writers’ room even talked about pairing the two up for an opposites-attract relationship. Other relationships they always considered but never actually acted on? “We always talked about Ryan/Anna. We always talked about Luke/Summer,” Schwartz revealed. “There’s all those kind of combinations—Seth/Marissa, we flirted with the idea.” Can you imagine?
14. There was almost a crossover episode with Arrested Development, as they both aired on Fox and were set in Southern California. “[Arrested Development creator] Mitch Hurwitz and I actually spoke at some Fox event together and had even talked about how, at one point, he wanted to have some of The O.C. actors on Arrested Development playing themselves as the actors from The O.C.,” Schwartz said, adding he ultimately felt it was “too meta” to actually have come to fruition.
For Schwartz, he called the decision to kill her off a difficult one. “It was born out of a number of issues,” he told the Daily Beast, “creative, cast chemistry, ratings.”
16. So did Barton want off the show? “Mischa didn’t want off the show any more than any of the other kids wanted off the show,” Schwartz admitted with a laugh. “It was a complicated chemistry with the cast…but she certainly wasn’t actively seeking to leave the show.”He then added, “I think they had mixed feelings about their fame emanating from a teen drama on Fox. It wasn’t how they sort of imagined their careers going, so that was challenging for sure.”
“Well, she felt older,” Schwartz explained to Uproxx. “Five months is a lifetime at that age.”
18. The O.C. almost didn’t land its fourth and final season. “There was a version of the show not coming back in season four. We had a new network president,” Schwartz recalled in the same interview. “They had kind of moved away from doing programming like The O.C., and there was a shot that there was no season four.”
19. At one point, The CW’s then-president Dawn Ostroff was “extremely interested” in airing a fifth season.
“You’re welcome, America. Yeah, the accidental legacy,” Schwartz joked. “You know, I would have liked to have a piece of the Real Housewives franchise, that’s for sure…You know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess is the expression, and so are reality shows based on your show. I’m flattered.”
21. Brody and Bilson dated for most of the series’ four-year run, breaking up during the filming of the final season, which ended with their characters getting married. Years later, Brody would marry Leighton Meester, the star of Schwartz’s other hit teen soap, Gossip Girl, in the crossover of fans’ dreams!
23. Berkeley Law School was so proud of having Sandy Cohen as one of its fictitious graduates that there was once a “Sandy Cohen Public Defender Fellowship.”
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