Hilarie Burton is stepping back from the weekly hosting duties of the One Tree Hill rewatch podcast Drama Queens.
The actress is mirroring her exit from the drama series after six seasons on the show and will not provide commentary on the remaining seasons.
“We have reached the end of my behind-the-scenes experience on the show, and so I really started to question what I brought to this, but also how we keep that storytelling alive and important,” Burton said on the latest episode of Drama Queens. “And so as we head into seasons seven through nine, it was important that we introduced a new queen who could take over for me.”
Burton assured podcast listeners that she would still “pop in here and there” but it would be Robert Buckley who would join Sophia Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz to recap the remaining seasons of the show.
Buckley joined One Tree Hill in Season 7 and played cocky sports agent Clay Evans.
“Very excited to be entering my Queen era,” Buckley shared in an Instagram post.
The Instagram account for Drama Queens also welcomed Buckley, sharing in a post, “We are so thrilled to have Robert joining us on this journey, and we are so excited to watch alongside him!!”
On her final podcast episode, Burton said that she felt like she “could finally take a deep breath because every single week it was, ‘Oh my God, I got to tell that story.’ ‘Oh my God, we have to relive that.’”
“And there’s obviously, like, so much good stuff that was in [the podcast], but I would have to kind of psych myself up every week,” she continued. “This was the first week in years, at this point, that I’ve been like, ‘I don’t have to divulge shit today. I was like, ‘I’m just gonna eat a smoothie bowl. I feel good today.’”