Mischa Barton Says She Dated ‘O.C.’ Co-Star Ben McKenzie At 17 — And He Was 25

Mischa Barton is opening up about how she felt in over her head on the set of her early aughts teen hit, “The O.C..”

On Wednesday’s episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, host Alex Cooper asked Barton how she felt about being a 17-year-old actor on the set, and playing Marissa Cooper, the teenage love interest of the character, Ryan Atwood. Ben McKenzie played the teen character Ryan, but was 25 years old at the time.

“That’s a pretty big age gap,” Cooper said to Barton. “How did you feel about that romantic on-screen relationship?”

“Yeah, that wasn’t just on-screen, either,” Barton said. “I mean, that was kind of complicated for me.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Barton says that her relationship with McKenzie was her “first.”

“And I had no idea what I was doing,” she said.

HuffPost has reached out to McKenzie for comment on Barton’s claim, but did not receive an immediate response.

Barton told Cooper that she and McKenzie “threw ourselves all into it very fast” and were seeing each other “at the very beginning of the show, like half-way through a season.” The show premiered in 2003 and ended in 2007.

“It definitely was tricky that it happened, like, right out of the gate,” Barton said, adding that their relationship “kind of set things off on the wrong foot” on set.

Apparently producers and crew members were concerned about a teenage Barton hooking up with an older man.

“I felt overwhelmed and not ready for any of that,” she recalled. “I remember they were like, ‘Mischa’s disappeared with Ben … she’s only 17 1/2, 18.’ And the producers went to my parents … and it was kind of like, a whole ordeal.”

Despite producers’ unease about her off-screen relationship with the “Gotham” alum, Barton noted that the producers initially encouraged her to get to know McKenzie for the sake of their characters.

“It kind of felt like a double-edged sword,” Barton said. “[The producers] were like, ‘Oh, we want it to seem like you guys are all really friends and that you have chemistry, and we need this to really work.’ And then you sort of get punished for it on the flip side. And they’re like, ‘Oh, but not so much that it affects our production.’ Or like, ‘What’s going on here?’”

Earlier in the podcast episode, Barton opened up about how it felt to be the youngest cast member on the popular…