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One Tree Hill’s Anna Finds Courage – and Romance?

Last fall, when One Tree Hill creator Mark Schwahn introduced the teenage children of the new Latino family on the block early into the second season of the WB teen drama, neither of the new teenagers were very popular with viewers. Teen ladies-man Felix (Michael Capon) immediately made a move on Brooke (Sophia Bush), and his beautiful but insecure sister Anna (Daniella Alonso) hit it off with the show’s heartthrob Lucas (Chad Michael Murray), jeopardizing the possibility for romance between Lucas and either of the show’s two popular female leads, Brooke and Peyton (Hilarie Burton).

“We introduced Anna as a romantic interest for Lucas,” explains Schwahn in an interview with AfterEllen.com, “and the audience was sort of offended, because half the girls were rooting for Lucas and Brooke, others for Lucas and Peyton, and the rest for Lucas and themselves.” Schwahn believes now that may have been a tactical error. “Viewers met Anna the same way they met [evil teen] Nicki, and she was such a villain that they sort-of equated that energy with Anna. That’s my fault.”

But Anna’s popularity with viewers improved as her potential romantic relationship with Lucas turned to friendship, and viewers learned the real reason Anna’s family moved to Tree Hill: widespread rumors about her relationship with another girl.

Anna’s storyline on One Tree Hill really didn’t pick up until late November (“Don’t Take Me For Granted”), when rumors that popular teen-artist-in-residence Peyton was gay began circulating through their high school. Although she’s straight, Peyton refused to be cowed, even when someone scrawled “Dyke” on her locker, and she defiantly wore a t-shirt sporting the epithet to school the next day until the Principal forced her to remove the shirt. While Anna valued her friendship with Peyton, she began avoiding her because the rumors about Peyton were all too reminiscent of the rumors about Anna at her last school.

Only in Anna’s case, the rumors were true.

Later (January 25th’s “The Heart Brings You Back”), Anna comes to her senses and apologizes to Peyton for not standing by her. Then Anna goes one step further: she kisses a surprised Peyton, who gently stops her by saying “that’s not really my thing.” Anna is mortified, but eventually patches things up with Peyton, admits the truth about the rumors at her old school to a supportive Lucas, and comes out to another friend.

But Anna’s biggest challenge now lies ahead: coming out to her family, and dealing with the possibility of a rekindled romance with the girl she left behind when her family moved. “I think viewers are really going to love Anna in the next couple episodes,” Schwahn enthuses.

Although Schwahn knew Anna was going to be bisexual before he cast her, he hadn’t specifically written her as Latina. “It was an open casting call,” he says. “I didn’t specific race or ethnicity, and once we met Daniella, I though ‘she’s terrific, and this is a great opportunity to write this Latino family into the show.'”

Alonso was excited about joining the cast, and playing such a three-dimensional Latina character. “At many of the auditions I’ve been on in the past,” Alonso tells AfterEllen.com, “they would hire a brunette white girl with brown eyes to play the Spanish girl. So I was really excited when the WB cast actual Latinos in the role. And I was happy they didn’t make us come from the type of stereotypical Latino family you usually see on TV.”

The characters of Anna and her brother Felix are still the only people of color on the show. “The show is very white,” Schwahn admits, “and I wish that wasn’t the case, but it fit the architecture of who Lucas was, and by extension, who his brother would be, and his mother would be, etc.”

After he cast Alonso as Anna, Schwahn didn’t immediately let her in on Anna’s secret, something which he says taught him a lesson about the importance of giving actors enough information. “When I didn’t give Daniella the information [about Anna’s sexuality],” he reflects, “she was struggling to figure out who Anna was, and why someone who seemed like such a relatively put-together girl would flee from simple rumors. She was ill-equipped to play the character I asked her to play because she didn’t have the information I had.”

Alonso admits she had a tough time initially trying to conceptualize what Anna was running from. “I thought maybe she did something high-school silly,” says Alonso, “something that could be solved in an episode. But then slowly, as I did the first few episodes, I noticed they were saying things in the script-making jokes, or comment here or there. Like the episode where I said ‘Don’t be so gay, Peyton.’ And I was like ‘What? What’s going on here?'”

Alonso pestered the producers on the set, but they would just smile and tell her “you’ll find out.”

Alonso, who says she has gay and bisexual friends, as well as gay uncle, didn’t feel compelled to do any special research for the role. “It’s like having a crush on a boy, only it’s a girl. I know what that feels like, so I just played it like that.”

As for playing the first recurring bisexual character of color on television, Alonso just says, “It’s about time!”

When asked why he chose to make Anna bisexual, instead of a lesbian, Schwahn’s answers are both pragmatic and philosophical. On the practical side, making her bisexual let the writers keep Anna’s past a secret, while maintaining some semblance of authenticity. “In order to hide what her journey was going to be,” explains Schwahn, “she was presented as a potential romantic interest for Lucas. I thought if she was strictly a lesbian character, that would be really out of nature for her, and a little disingenuous to lesbians.”

From a philosophical standpoint, Schwahn felt there was more territory to explore with a bisexual character. “There’s still more of a bias towards [bisexual] characters,” he says. “I see support groups for people on both ends of the spectrum, but none for people in the middle. I just felt like this character, seemingly without a country, was a very compelling character. I really felt for her dilemma, and when you connect emotionally to a character, it opens up so many avenues for a writer to write. I was really rooting for Anna and I felt like that was the best way to go.”

When asked about the WB’s reaction to Anna’s storyline, Schwahn contends “They’ve been very supportive of it. It’s sort-of a catch-22, though. If it had been Lucas or Nate, they probably would have said, ‘Wait, hold everything. These are our male leads and you can’t do that to them.’ But they have really said nothing about it. I don’t ever remember it being an issue for even a moment.”

Anna’s storyline allowed One Tree Hill to put a contemporary twist on classic themes. “We’re telling some of the oldest stories in the world on the show,” says Schwahn, “stories of love, jealousy, trust, who you’re going to be when you get older.” Although on the surface it may seem different, Anna’s storyline is fundamentally about the same things.

“Anna wants to be herself, and yet she’s carrying around something she sees as a stigma, even though she knows that it shouldn’t be” Schwahn explains. “It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to stand up and say ‘this is who I am,’ and yet this is also the hardest thing in the world for her. I thought this was very compelling as a storyline, and a healthy storyline to tell in this day and age.”

There have been bisexual characters on television before, but rarely is the concept of bisexuality openly embraced and explored on network television the way it has been on One Tree Hill this season. In the episode in which she comes out to Lucas, she tells him she likes girls and boys, and in another scene, Anna is shown registering for a dating site online and choosing “both” when asked which gender she was interested in. In yet another episode, she says in a videotape for a time capsule, “I’m gay, and I’m straight,” and then rants about labels.

In contrast, when teen drama-queen Marissa (Mischa Barton) fell for another girl on the popular Fox teen drama The O.C. this season, she barely spent any time exploring what this meant about her sexuality, and the word “bisexual” was never used once.

Why did One Tree Hill decide to actually use the word “bisexual,” and embrace the concept explicitly, when few others have? “I hadn’t actually considered that,” he responds. “I just thought, if that’s who the character is, then that’s what she should be announcing.”

Schwahn and his team of writers do sometimes use the term “gay” and “bisexual” interchangeably. In her conversation with Felix in tomorrow’s episode, for example, Anna tells him “now you know, I’m gay.” Her use of the word “gay” instead of “bisexual” wasn’t meant to imply that Anna is not bisexual, Schwahn clarifies. “If I had known the word bisexual was more taboo,” reflects Schwahn, “we may have gone in that direction. For me it seemed like Felix was so homophobic, that for her to say ‘I’m gay’ to him felt even stronger for her.”

While lesbian and bisexual storylines seem to be increasingly popular on television, they are often nothing more than sweeps stunts, or are poorly executed. On ER, Dr. Weaver’s sexuality has only been referenced once this season–during Sweeps weeks–and the lesbian storyline on The O.C. started off well, but ultimately proved disappointing to lesbian and bisexual viewers. Schwahn didn’t see The O.C.’s lesbian storyline, but says “from what I heard, they were doing a boy-fantasy, sexy version, and we were doing more of a real version.”

Unlike the relationship between the bisexual teens on The O.C., One Tree Hill‘s bisexual storyline has received very little attention from the press–which is fine by Schwahn. “I’m kind of glad we’ve flown under the radar,” he says, “because I think it allows us to be true to the stories we’re telling, rather than have to pander to some bigger ratings number, or to shock and surprise people every week with some disingenuous moment.”

“I never positioned this story to be a ratings-grabber, or the sexy version of the story,” continues Schwahn. “Some people roll their eyes at that, but it’s the truth. Anna’s story was going to tell a lot of other stories, including Peyton having ‘dyke’ written on her locker, which is the hate-crime version of that. Whether or not I’m gay, if someone is painting that on anyone’s locker, who’s going to stand up for them? These were issues I felt were compelling storylines.”

They didn’t show the kiss, but they did show an angry Peyton ripping off her “dyke” t-shirt in the school hallway. “I was actually disappointed they showed Peyton taking her t-shirt off in the promo,” Schwahn says, “because it made that moment seem like we were trying to grab attention with it. But the point wasn’t to see Hilarie Burton in a bra. The point was her defiance, and her taking a stand and trying to be supportive even though she herself wasn’t gay or bisexual.”

On this Tuesday’s episode, “Something I Can Never Have,” Anna finally comes out to her homophobic brother, Felix. “That was the most fun I’ve ever had acting,” Alonso says of filming the coming-out scenes with Capon. “It was the saddest, but the most fun. Paul Johansson, who plays Dan on the show, was a fantastic director, and we were crying, and then shooting, crying, then shooting for seven hours. It was amazing.”

Next, Alonso shot her scenes with Sprague Grayden (Joan of Arcadia), the actress who plays Anna’s ex-girlfriend Darby–and fortunately for Alonso and viewers rooting for Anna, they involved less crying. “I didn’t get a chance to meet Sprague beforehand, because they flew her in the night before. So the first time we met on the set, at like 6am that morning, I said ‘hey, let’s talk,’ and we just started talking, developing some kind of relationship, creating back history for Anna and Darby. She’s awesome, a great actress, so I had fun with it.”

Schwahn was happy to cast Grayden in the role. “[The WB] brought in some real pinup-y looking girls,” he recounted, “and I thought that really just took you out of the story. It felt disingenuous to the storyline. When I saw Sprague, I said ‘this girl’s fantastic.'”

Darby’s visit to Tree Hill awakens old feelings for Anna, which only intensify her introspection–and prompts her to make some hard decisions about who she is and what she wants. “We thought, ‘why don’t we make this journey about what everyone else’s journey is on this show?'” says Schwahn. “This is about a girl who wants to fall in love, and wants to be in love, who says, ‘Why not me?'”

But enough about Anna for now–what about all those Brooke and Peyton rumors? “I’ve seen the message boards,” laughs Schwahn. “I was really surprised in the finale of last year, when they were lying in bed together, and it was the end of a journey for them?they had had a falling out and come back together?and I was surprised that the audience read that that there was some sexual tension there. It wasn’t intended. We haven’t steered away from it, but we haven’t written into it, either.”

There are indeed many message board threads online devoted to the possible pairing of these two, and Bush and Burton even joke around about it in the Season 1 DVD commentary. “Brooke and Peyton are not lovers, thanks, lets just establish that right now,” Bush says on the commentary. Burton responds, “That’s true. At least not in season one,” and Bush fires back, “not till season 3, Hil, come on!”

Bush and Burton did raise the issue with Schwahn after the first-season finale. “I think Sophia and Hilarie were concerned that we were sort-of winking at the audience and telling a story that wasn’t there,” Schwahn recounts, “and I said to them ‘Look guys, I’ll be upfront with you about whatever tales we’re telling. As far as I’m concerned, these two are best friends.’ I said, ‘You know, you’re both attractive, and when you have two attractive girls in bed together, somebody’s gonna go there.’ But right now that’s not what I have planned for you.’

“But it’s a long journey in Tree Hill,” he finishes with a laugh, “so you never know.”

Exactly how long the show’s journey will be remains to be seen. One Tree Hill has definitely grown its fan base in its second season, but it still struggles with ratings at times, and many critics have placed it among the list of shows on the bubble for renewal next season.

But Schwahn believes pick up for a third season is right around the corner. “I would be shocked if we weren’t renewed, based on the conversations I’ve had with the network and the studio, and I think they’re going to pick us up for even more episodes than the normal season, like 24 or 26,” he says optimistically, then adding cautiously “but it hasn’t happened yet, so who knows.”

Regardless of what happens next season, the next part of Anna’s story–coming out to her family, making sense of her feelings for an ex-girlfriend–offers several scenes which may seem at least vaguely familiar to lesbian and bisexual teens and adults.

“I really think this show is at its best when someone I’ll never meet, someone our writers will never meet, can take away from our show something that resonates in their life,” Schwahn asserts. “We do our water-cooler moments, we do our soapy moments, but I also believe the show can serve a higher function.”

“If this show can help someone, that’s what we should be doing.”

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