Holiday In The Sun's Austin Nichols Felt "Wrong" Kissing Mary-Kate Olsen
The six-year age gap didn't help things.
One of the most romantic scenes in the iconic Olsen twins movie Holiday in the Sun wasn’t very fun to film. In fact, the movie’s love interest Austin Nichols recently revealed that he felt “weird” and “wrong” while kissing Mary-Kate Olsen in the vacation rom-com’s climactic scene. The reason for his discomfort was the significant age gap between two stars.
“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 during his April 15 appearance on Sophia Bush’s Drama Queens podcast. At the time of Holiday in the Sun’s release in 2001, Nichols was 21 and Olsen was 15.
In the vacation movie, Nichols played Griffen, a childhood friend of Olsen’s Madison who harbored a secret crush on her. When Madison learns of Griffen’s affections for her, the two share a romantic kiss in front of the Atlantis Resort water feature.
Although Nichols noted that he “looked very young” at that time, the age gap between himself and Olsen was very much top-of-mind to him while filming that moment. “It felt weird, and it felt wrong,” Nichols said. “I don’t think you can tell there’s a big age difference. But from my brain, I was like, ‘She’s 15. This is weird.’”
The on-screen romance was a markedly different experience from Nichols’ other major 2000s role a few years later in One Tree Hill. He joined the series in part due to his IRL relationship with co-star Sophia Bush, which soon informed their characters’ love lives. By the show’s final season, Nichols’ Julian was married to Bush’s Brooke and they were raising a family together.
“They played matchmaker for us in the weirdest way,” Bush told Nichols during a prior Drama Queens podcast in 2024, referring to the higher-ups at OTH. “I was like, ‘Is that appropriate for your bosses to do?’ But also, it was such a sweet season.”
