One Tree Hill’s Paul Johansson struggled with depression during the show

Paul Johansson gets candid about how his role will move forward One Tree Hill took a toll on his mental health.

“It was horrible,” Johansson, 59, shared on the Tuesday, December 19, episode of the series ‘Trying to figure it out with Ally Petitti’ podcast. “I was deeply depressed and I drank.”

Johansson played the role of infamous villain Dan Scott in the teen drama series, which aired on The WB in 2003. In the show, his character is the biological father of Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) and the master manipulator of their small town.

The actor said he drank “a couple of bottles of wine a night” on his own, adding that “it was really hard” for “about six or seven years.” Johansson also revealed that people would move seats on planes “to get away from him.”

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“It was just a time where I think I absorbed the energy of the people who looked at me and saw me and saw me as something that was bad,” he recalled, adding that he was “sensitive” and “vulnerable to criticism ” used to be.

He noted that the way “to get out” was that the show “had to end.” When OTH It finally came to an end in 2012, Johansson confessing that he was “actually grateful.”

“I got to go out and do different characters and feel different things, but then I started getting villain roles again because of that show,” he said. “It put me in a box.”

When podcast host Ally Petitti When asked if he got any support from the show, he replied: “It’s a very, very simple question. Never, nothing, zero.”

This isn’t the first time Johansson has opened up about his time at the OTH. After Costar Bethany Joy Lenz sometimes called the set “divisive,” Johansson exclusively shared We weekly that he never experienced that.

“I think I was more isolated from that,” he said Us in August 2019. “I think people were more cautious around me because I was from a different generation. I’m a big dog, you know what I mean? So I don’t think this would have happened on my watch if I had seen any of it. I didn’t see anything on set, but sets can become quite familiar with each other. Boundaries can get a little blurry. You have to check yourself and help each other.”

Johansson noted that “it was a super close set”, and that they “really all loved each other.”

“I didn’t know anything about that — whether there was any separation in that regard,” he said. “I don’t think I was involved in any of that stuff as an older character.”

He continued: “What I believe is that we have a hugely powerful female contingent that has really driven our show. I feel like that show is a female-driven show and we followed the girls a lot more than they ever followed us. For example, our leaders were Joy, Sophia [Bush] And Hilary [Burton Morgan]. They were our leaders in many ways and set many examples.”