Sophia Bush said she argued with a boss on “One Tree Hill” and the series’ writers during her tenure on The CW show over scenes she felt were “inappropriate.”
“I fought a lot with the writers,” Bush said on Tuesday’s episode of “Pretty Big Deal,” a podcast hosted by model Ashley Graham. “I was sort of unaware of the power dynamics at play and I would just say things. I’d be like, ‘I’m not doing this.'”
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Bush, 37, said that while she “didn’t realize how inappropriate” the staff was at the time, she felt uncomfortable by some of the demands placed on her. She recalled that a male boss kept writing scenes for her to be in her underwear. When she confronted him about the scenes, arguing that she didn’t think the show “should be teaching 16-year-old girls to be doing and to be seeking validation this way,” the boss allegedly responded that she wasn’t 16 years old. Bush began her role playing Brooke Davis, a high school junior, when she was 17 years old.
Bush said she insisted that she would not do the scenes, to which the boss responded, “Well you’re the one with the big f—— rack everybody wants to see.”
Bush did not name the boss in the interview. However, she and other female cast members wrote a letter in 2017 accusing “One Tree Hill” creator and showrunner Mark Schwahn of “traumatizing” sexual harassment during the show’s eight-year run. The letter prompted an investigation, after which Schwahn was fired from E!’s “The Royals.”
Bush previously shared that she had experienced “abusive behavior” on the set of “Chicago PD” on a 2018 episode of Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert” podcast.
“The reality was that my body was, like, falling apart, because I was really, really unhappy,” said Bush, who left the show in May 2017 after four seasons.
Bush is slated to star in “False Positive,” a horror film co-written by John Lee and “Broad City’s” Ilana Glazer, later this year. She will also have a reoccurring role on the forthcoming “Love, Simon” television series.
