Sophia Bush Speaks Out About Alleged Abuse On TV Show Set
The ‘One Tree Hill’ actress opens up about a toxic workplace environment.
Sophia Bush is speaking out about alleged physical and emotional abuse she suffered on the set of a television series she previously worked on.
On the Tuesday, June 3, episode of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky, Bush, 42, said the alleged abuse occurred on a series she joined after her run on the teen drama One Tree Hill ended in 2012.
Though she did not name the show where the abuse took place, Bush played Erin Lindsay on Chicago P.D. from 2014 until her exit in 2017.
The actress told Lewinsky, 51, that starring in the series was on her bucket list until she suffered “every kind” of abuse on set from someone “old enough to be her father.”
“When I look back at it, I had the opportunity after two years to go,” Bush explained, “I did the thing I learned to do and said, ‘I will not have my integrity diminished by someone else’s behavior. I will be unflappable. I will come to work and do my job.’ And I couldn’t.”
Bush said her last two years on the show were a “physical hell.” She recalls waking up covered in hives and suffering from crippling anxiety along with weight fluctuations, hair loss, and insomnia.
“[I was] hit with anxiety in such a way that I could barely be out of the house. If people touched me in public, I would jump out of my skin,” Bush said. “I couldn’t talk to people anymore. I couldn’t talk to strangers anymore. I couldn’t be looked at anymore.”
She compared the trauma to a physical attack, leading her to be on the defensive at all times.
“I had to go to work ready for war all the time, I had to learn where to stand to not get elbowed in the ribs or how to block a scene to not be touched. It was just exhausting,” she added.
Bush ultimately left the series in April 2017, just three months before the #MeToo movement caused upheaval in Hollywood and beyond.
“By October [2017], I got a call from an executive apologizing for what they’d done and not done,” she claimed. “[They] said, ‘We’re very aware we just made it out of that unscathed.’”
Bush first opened up about her departure from Chicago P.D. in December 2017, telling Refinery 29’s Unstyled podcast that she gave producers two options: change her environment or write her character off the series.
“It was then that I realized I’d been drowning. It was then that I knew just how miserable I was going to work every day,” Bush said at the time. “I had to respect myself in a situation where I didn’t feel respected.”
