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Lucy Hale is addressing her Pretty Little Liars character’s controversial romance.
The actress, 37, played a high school student in the hit CW series, while Ian Harding, 40, played her teacher, with whom her character had a romantic relationship.
Harding and Hale are reuniting for a Christmas movie years after Aria and Ezra ended up together on the show. Announcements of their film resulted in fans raising questions about their past underage romance.
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“A little older and wiser, but the same two idiots,” Hale captioned a post announcing their upcoming film, which referenced their past characters.
Fans who were thrilled about the movie were less excited by the reference and chimed in to ridicule Hale and Harding for “glamorizing” the romance in the comments section.
“It’s 2026. We don’t romanticize that couple anymore,” one commenter wrote.
“Even as a kid, y’all grossed me out,” another penned. “Like ew, ew, ew.”
“Not sure why they are still romanticizing this couple because the age gap in the show is literally a 20-something-year-old teacher with a teenager,” a third added.
‘It Didn’t Age Well’
Hale responded to backlash over their past characters in a since-expired Instagram Story, noting that she was aware Aria and Ezra’s romance was “problematic and “didn’t age well.”
“I just wanted to pop on here really quickly to say that the video I posted earlier of me and Ian, in promotion of our new movie that’s coming out at an undisclosed date really soon, I’m obviously seeing a lot of the comments,” the actress shared. “I just want to say that two realities can be very true.”
“It can also be true that Ian and I were teenagers when we were doing that show. And we were quick friends. We have known each other almost 20 years,” Hale continued. “So the video was actually more about Ian and I’s friendship, not glamorizing anything. So I might delete this, but just wanted to give a little intel.”
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Ian Harding Reacts to the Controversy
Harding previously addressed the controversial romance in his 2017 memoir, Odd Birds, in which he called himself “America’s most beloved p——–.”
“As society has progressed, we realized how wildly inappropriate it was,” he wrote at the time. “But at the same time, just because you depict something on TV doesn’t mean you condone the behavior.”
He noted that he does not “deeply regret” taking the role of the controversial teacher and brushed it off as “fiction.”
“It is a story meant for entertainment, and the show was a thriller. Now that I look back on it, I see that it was just like the show, with the twists and turns, and it had some horror elements and then it also had this romance component,” he continued. “But I also realize that it did bring up a lot of harder discussions about what is actually considered abuse and what is considered love.”
Hale previously addressed the controversy surrounding their relationship in an interview last year, admitting that she “wasn’t really thinking about the bigger themes” when the show was made.
“Of course, it hits differently at my age now and I think about the bigger message in anything I play,” she noted.
