ABC's Dancing With The Stars is generally considered harmless entertainment by most of the show's fans and participants. After all, how intense can a pros-and-joes dance competition really get? That care free, lighthearted vibe apparently wasn't even remotely close to what The O.C.'s Mischa Barton experienced during her time on the show, however. The actress explained:
Ugh. I had no idea it would be so bad. I got told off by my dancer. I was supposed to control the costumes, I was told that I could do the design aspect of it, that's kind of the reason why I agreed to do it. That didn't happen. It wasn't collaborative like a choreographer on a film set. ... I was so confused by it. It was like The Hunger Games. It was all a popularity contest. It was awful. I was so glad to get kicked off.
Mischa Barton recently spoke to The Ringer about her experiences on Dancing With The Stars, and it's fairly obvious that she didn't love her time on the ABC series; the comparison to The Hunger Games seems like the biggest giveaway in that regard, if words like "bad" and "awful" are meaningless. Barton signed on for the series with the understanding that she would have quite a bit of creative control over the routines and costumes, but she claimed that her partner Artem Chigvintsev took the reins and didn't allow her to have much input on the team. In short: she was happy to leave when it was her time.
That being said, it's probably worth noting that (as always) there are two sides to every story. Rumors from behind the scenes on Dancing With The Stars have indicated that Mischa Barton wasn't a terribly skilled dancer to begin with, and her demeanor with the rest of the show's contestants was apparently less than friendly. (Seriously, who can't get along with Ginger Zee and Marla Maples?) There are even rumors online suggesting that the actress had a "meltdown" behind the scenes of the show after her elimination. This could explain where her head was at if those are true.
If she DID have a meltdown, I wonder if it looked anything like this:
These incidents seem to be the latest in a long line of behind-the-scenes drama for Mischa Barton. For example, although it has become widely publicized that she left The O.C. after its third season in order to focus on her movie career, there have been other unsubstantiated rumors suggesting that Marissa Cooper was killed off the series because of Barton's own difficulties with The O.C.'s executive producer and creator Josh Schwartz. I'm not saying that there's a definite theme here, but it's also not outside of the realm of possibility. Of course, reality shows of all kinds also routinely make headlines for terrible situations and dishonesty incited by producers.
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