Ashlee Simpson and Mischa Barton battling over 'Melrose Place' role

Lisa Rinna isn’t the only woman in Hollywood begging for a role on The CW’s upcoming revival of Melrose Place.

The Rumor Mill is heating up with whispers that actresses Mischa Barton and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz are prepared to go toe-to-toe over the new show.

Mischa Barton may have landed a part on the network’s new Ashton Kutcher-produced drama A Beautiful Life, but it was the role of small-town sex kitten Violet that the former OC sar desperately wanted to make her own.

Alas, it was not to be.

Melrose producers decided new mom Ashlee, who first took her acting chops for a test run on the beloved family drama 7th Heaven, was the best actress to breathe life into the show’s Violet.

Mischa’s livid, friends of the 23-year-old reveal in the March 30 issue of The National Enquirer. She is emphatic that Ashlee, 24, aggresively hounded network executives and deliberately snatched the part originally earmarked for her.

Not so, Simpson-Wentz insiders tell the tab.

“Ashlee did well on 7th Heaven, then nailed this new part. It’s nothing personal toward Mischa.”

The possibility that Ashlee may have “out auditioned” her, winning the role of Violet fair and square, is doing little to ease Mischa’s woes.

“Mischa’s furious with Ashlee because she believes Ashlee knew that she badly wanted the part of Violet and set out to steal it!”
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