One Tree Hill is one of the best teen dramas streaming, even if the show did go on too long. The cast was positively perfect, and it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the beloved and sometimes hated characters. Which is why I’m surprised to hear that Chad Michael Murray nearly played a different character.
Everyone knows that Murray portrayed Lucas Scott on the WB/CW drama. Raised by a single mom who starts out as rivals with his half-brother, Nathan, Lucas was the typical good guy. He kept to himself, had one best friend, was protective of his mother, and worked for his uncle at his auto shop. James Lafferty portrayed Nathan Scott, a basketball star at Tree Hill High and an NBA hopeful. Apparently, Murray almost played Nathan, meaning he would’ve added yet another bad boy to his growing resume, as he told People:
I remember back when the show came my way, everyone wanted me to play Nathan, that was what the show was going to be. I had just done Tristan DuGray [on Gilmore Girls], I had just done Charlie Todd [on Dawson’s Creek], you know, I had done kind of the bad boy thing.
Anyone who has watched Murray on either Gilmore Girls and/or Dawson’s Creek know that he can definitely play a bad boy a pretty well. Or at the very least, a character that is very sarcastic and annoying. Understandably, Murray didn’t want to be typecast as the “bad boy,” and one of his friends helped him realize that if he went for Lucas instead, things would be different:
I remember a friend said to me, ‘You know, you stay there, you’re gonna get locked into just being that guy. But this character [Lucas], this character’s like the guy. You wanna be that guy.’ And, and I just was like, ‘You’re right, you’re right.’ It’s different, I’m an actor, I want to try different things.
Lucas and Nathan couldn’t be farther from each other in terms of characteristics, especially when the show was first starting out. Lucas kept to himself, playing basketball as a hobby, working with his uncle. Whereas Nathan was the popular guy, basketball star, and always threw it in Lucas’ face that their father didn’t abandon him like he did Lucas.
Even though Murray definitely fit Lucas better, he does think Nathan was the more interesting character:
At the end of the day, I think being Nathan is more interesting because of the evolution of finding yourself, whereas Lucas was very much the moral compass. He was the center of this world. He was the moral compass that held this whole thing together, right? However, Nathan had that biggest arc. I think James [Lafferty] got to have more fun.
If people ever thought how things would have been had the roles been reversed, there’s really no use in wondering. One Tree Hill did air a “what if?” episode during Season 2. In “Lifetime Piling Up,” while unconscious after a car crash, Nathan dreams of an alternate reality where he has Lucas’ life, and Lucas has his life after their dad married Lucas’ mom, Karen, and not Nathan’s mom, Deb. I’m a sucker for a good alternate reality-type episode, and “Lifetime Piling Up” is one of my favorites in the series.
It’s always interesting finding out what other role an actor was up for in the same project and how different things could have been. It’s also interesting knowing that Murray and Bethany Joy Lenz, who played Haley, played platonic soulmates perfectly, but Lenz’s chemistry with Lafferty was off the charts, and Naley defined relationship goals. How Naley would have gone down had Nathan been played by Murray is hard to tell.
Luckily, some things just work out for the better, and I am so grateful that casting for One Tree Hill went in the direction it did. But now I feel like rewatching the show with a Hulu subscription, knowing what could have been.
