Kissing young Mary-Kate Olsen in movie felt ‘wrong,’ Austin Nichols says

Austin Nichols is forever hearing about Holiday in the Sun, the 2001 video from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen that he costarred in early in his career. And he recalls being anxious when they shot it for a very specific reason.

“I was definitely nervous because Mary-Kate was 15, and I was, I think, 18 or 19, or maybe even 20. I don’t remember, but I was too old,” Nichols said on Wednesday’s episode of the Drama Queens podcast, which is hosted by his former One Tree Hill costars Hilarie Burton Morgan, Sophia Bush, and Bethany Joy Lenz. “It felt weird, and it felt wrong,” added the actor, who would’ve been 21 when the movie was released

He said the age difference wasn’t too obvious to viewers, though. “I looked very young, so watching the movie, I don’t think you notice,” he said. “I’m real tall and skinny and, like, nerdy, but I don’t think you can tell there’s a big age difference. But for my brain, I was like, ‘she’s 15, this is not — this is weird.'”

Nichols, who turned 21 before the movie arrived in stores, decided to do something about his discomfort.

“I remember talking to producers, and I remember talking to — even her dad was there. I was like, ‘Is this OK with you guys?’ And they were all like, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it!’ Nobody was, you know, nobody seemed concerned, and I was very concerned, but it turned out fine. It was all very G-rated.”

The story of Holiday in the Sun is that twin sisters Madison and Alex Stewart were stuck spending their winter break not with their friends, but with their parents. They met Nichols’ Griffen Grayson at their resort in the Bahamas.

Bush, for one, thought Nichols had done the right thing.

“That really speaks to your character, though, because, listen, they’d been acting since they were little. It’s not like a 15-year-old girl was going to have her first kiss ever with a guy five years older than her,” she said. “But the fact that, as the older actor in the room, [you] were like, ‘Hey, how are we going to address this? Because yes, this is our job, but also we got to acknowledge what’s happening here.'”

“They’re children,” Nichols said.

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He also noted that he “learned pretty quickly when I was in One Tree Hill that there was a similar audience from those movies — Mary-Kate and Ashley movies — to One Tree Hill, and there was a lot of overlap there.”

People still talk to Nichols, who was on the show from 2008 to 2012, about the Olsen movie “a lot.” Even though it hasn’t always been his favorite.

“It’s one of those things — where you’re young and you’re trying to make your career as an actor and do all these cool projects, [and] you have this one that you feel is maybe a little silly,” Nichols said. “I had to give that up years ago because people love it.”

Watch their full conversation above.