RE: My thoughts on Mischa + the comments on The OC
Having given this more thought, I think by large she really doesn't say anything that bad. It's a little sad as a Marissa fan to see her not reflect positively on the show and ergo Marissa, but that said she does seem to cite her main frustration as the excess fame and attention that came with the show. And that is fair, because she has been a victim of a LOT of really cruel scrutiny and from as much as it is possible to tell, she appears to have had a turbulent few years after The OC. Where she can be faulted in her comments is that there is a slight sense of her being presumptuous of still having a good/decent acting career had The OC not happened. That's something that may or may not have happened, and it would be good to show some acknowledgement of the positive of the OC exposure for her stature as an actress. It is true that Mischa's case is not like Ben or Rachel from whom The OC was truly a massive break into the acting world and came when they were all more or less unemployed. Mischa was 16, in school and she had some form of an acting career going on the side. It's very true that The OC was a major platform for future opportunities, one that many actors and actresses would love to have had and she should be appreciative of that, but I can see how from her perspective The OC does not feel like this massive indispensable breakthrough. If she now regrets that choice she made at 16, that's fair and not something that fully deems criticism.
For what it's worth, I don't think she actually hated the experience of working on the show by large. It was obviously not a perfect, rosy experience but also not an entirely miserable one. It's become pretty obvious that pretty much ALL the core four were not entirely happy by the time season 4 was approaching. I recently stumbled upon this old Mischa interview from 2007:
Mischa Barton: Growing pains - Features - Films - The Independent It's a brief discussion of The OC but revealing in that, it's apparent Mischa had qualms with the writing of Marissa in season 3 but there's still some kind of fondness for the show. That's perhaps faded over the years and well, that's just something we need to accept and move on I suppose.