Lucy Hale and Ian Harding are defending their on-screen relationship.
Hale, who played protagonist Aria Montgomery, and Harding, who played her high school English teacher Ezra Fitz in the Freeform drama defended the controversial age-gap relationship in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Friday, June 20.
"It was a different time," Hale said. "Would that storyline exist if it were being made now? I’m not sure, but probably not."
"At the time I was cast as Aria, I was 19 years old and I wasn’t really thinking about the bigger themes of it all," she continued. "I was just stoked to be cast in a TV show. Of course, it hits differently at my age now and I think about the bigger message in anything I play."
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Harding echoed Hale's sentiments, saying he doesn’t “regret” the controversial storyline as it was a work of fiction.
"It was purposely taboo. We were playing into this fantasy. I certainly had the teacher fantasy thing when I was in high school, but at the same time, just because you depict something on TV doesn’t mean you condone the behavior," Harding said.
Fellow PLL alum Sasha Pieterse also joined the conversation, telling the Hollywood Reporter that the inappropriate relationship was more Aria's fault than Ezra's as she lied about her age.
"To Ezra's credit, he met her at a college bar," she said. "Why would he think she was underage? In so many ways it's Aria's bad."
However, loyal fans were quick to point out that it was revealed in season 4 that Ezra knew who Aria was - and her age - long before they first met in the series' pilot episode. The controversial couple got married in the series finale of the show, which aired in 2017.
The Hollywood Reporter interview was conducted in celebration of the teen drama's 15-year anniversary, which was on June 8.
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