The actor, who played the controlling father of basketball prodigy Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) and Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray), gets candid in an interview about how his character Dan impacted his mental health.
- Dec 21, 2023
AceShowbiz - Working on "One Tree Hill" was seemingly not an easy task for Paul Johansson. The actor, best known for portraying Dan Scott on the WB/CW series, revealed that playing the role led him to struggle with depression and alcoholism.
"It was awful," the 59-year-old said in the Tuesday, December 19 episode of the "Trying to Figure It Out With Ally Petitti" podcast. He added, "I was, I've never spoken about this before, I was deeply depressed and I was drinking. I was drinking a couple bottles of wine a night by myself. For about six or seven years, it was really tough."
"It was just a time when I think I was absorbing the energy of the people that were looking at me, and seeing me as something that's bad," Paul, who played the controlling father of basketball prodigy Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) and Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray), added. "To get out of it, the way to do it was the show had to end for me."
Paul went on to share, "I needed to get out and to get other characters and feel other things, but then I was getting bad guy roles again because of that show." He further noted, "It put me in a box."
Podcast host Ally Petitti then asked Paul if there was any support from the show. In response, he claimed, "It's a really, really simple question. Never, nothing, zero."
Paul shared his story years after he reacted to Bethany Joy Lenz calling "One Tree Hill" set "divided." Seemingly disagreed with Joy, he told Us Weekly in 2019, "I think I was more isolated from that. I think people were more careful around me, because I was a different generation."
"I'm a big dog, you know what I mean? So I don't think that would have gone on under my watch, had I seen any of it," the American-Canadian star elaborated. "I didn't see anything on the set, but sets can become pretty familiar with each other. Boundaries can get a little bit blurry. You've got to check yourselves and help each other."
