Getty Images

If you watch Pretty Little Liars, then you know Ian Harding as Ezra Fitz, former Rosewood High School teacher of English and current-ish fiancé of Aria Montgomery. Ezra became an author in season six, and now Ian has followed suit in real life: His first book, , hit shelves Tuesday. Odd Birds is a memoir that covers everything from Ian's childhood to his early days in Hollywood and his lifelong interest in birding, but given that he's spent the last seven years of his life working on PLL, you won't be surprised to learn that the book includes quite a few anecdotes about everyone's favorite teen murder mystery. Below are 13 of Ian's best stories from the PLL set, including the time Shay Mitchell stole a fridge straight out of his dressing room (he still won't tell you who A.D. is though).

St. Martin's Press

1. He wore a green Hollister sweater to his audition for Pretty Little Liars. His agent told him to wear “nice” clothes, but the only clean thing he had was the sweater, which he’d had since high school. After he got his first PLL paycheck, he had it dry-cleaned.

2. The real reason the Cavanagh house got blown up was because it had termites. In the 100th episode of PLL, A blew up the Cavanaugh house while the Liars were at Emily’s house. The writers decided to include this because the house on the Warner Bros. lot that served as Toby’s place had termites and needed to be torn down in real life. “I was there for the explosion,” Ian says, “and for the record, it was awesome.”

3. Funeral scenes are actually fun to shoot. As anyone who watches PLL knows, the show averages more funerals per season than most — that’s just what happens when you live in a town as murderous as Rosewood. According to Ian, these scenes are actually kind of fun, because so many cast members are involved in filming. “The scenes when we’re all working together are sort of like cast reunions,” he writes. “The mood on set is even more lighthearted than usual.”

4. Everyone except Keegan Allen avoids the craft services table on days when they have to shoot sex scenes. Ian says he spends days he has to be shirtless on camera “drinking coffee and doing push-ups,” but Keegan is not plagued by a similar commitment to swole-dom — according to Ian, Keegan “walks around eating entire pizzas before he has to take off his shirt.”

5. Marlene King had a mini fridge put in Ian’s dressing room but Shay Mitchell stole it. Marlene thought Ian was unhappy because his dressing room was so empty, so she tried to spruce the place up with a fridge. He liked said fridge until he walked in on his co-star attempting to steal it (he helped her get it to her own room).

6. Ashley Benson tries to punch Ian in the balls every single day they work together. She also steals his dogs to “take them on adventures.”

7. Ian is not allowed to shave his own facial hair. Ezra Fitz is sometimes clean-shaven, sometimes stubbly, but either way, Ian does not do the shaving himself. Cindy Miguens, the head of the PLL hair and makeup department, shaves Ian’s hair to whatever length it needs to be the day of shoots, because any cut he makes could delay filming and thus “cost the studio a lot of money.”

8. He’s also not allowed to cut his hair. He’s been “contractually obligated” to keep his hair the same length for the run of the show, and when he needs trims, he gets them from the show’s hairstylist.

9. But he does have to shave his chest. “The network requires all the men on the show to have smooth, porpoise-y chests,” Ian writes.

10. Ian used so much mouthwash the day of his first on-screen kiss with Lucy Hale that his mouth was numb the next day. Ezria fans know that the couple’s first meeting happened in a bar, where a friendly chat led to them making out in the bathroom. Apparently Ian wanted to make a good impression on his co-star, because he “flossed three times” before filming and kept mouthwash on hand for breaks. “At dinner that night with the cast, everything tasted minty fresh,” he says, “and the next day my mouth was numb.”

11. Ian once helped Keegan through “the near death of his beloved cat Minin from ingested hair ties.” The two actors are close friends in real life, to the point that Keegan texts Ian photos of birds to see if he can identify them (though he also texts him far-off specks when he feels like mocking Ian’s ornithological interests).

12. Lucy “loves nicknames” and calls Ian “Schmian.” He calls her Lucy Goosey.

13. Lucy can usually be found napping between takes. According to Ian, Lucy “naps everywhere” and “could sleep on a bed made of barbed wire.”

Follow Eliza on Twitter.



Eliza Thompson senior entertainment editor I’m the senior entertainment editor at Cosmopolitan.com, which means my DVR is always 98 percent full.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io