Sophia Bush starred on the teen drama One Tree Hill from 2003-2012, and the actress has now opened up about sexual harassment she says she faced from show creator and showrunner Mark Schwahn during her time on the show, TVLine reports.
Speaking to Andy Cohen on his Sirius XM show Andy Cohen Live, Bush said that the first time Schwahn allegedly inappropriately touched her, she hit him in front of several other crew members in response.
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“The first time Mark Schwahn grabbed my ass, I hit him in front of six other producers,” she said. “And I hit him f—ing hard.”
Bush also alleged that Schwahn was “super obsessed” with another female on the show.
“We knew about things he’d say to people, we knew about the late-night texts, we knew when he was super-obsessed with one girl on our show that he started trying to bang down her hotel room door in the middle of the night,” she said. “She had to be moved, her rooms were moved. And then her boyfriend came and stayed with her the next month. It almost came to fisticuffs between the two of them.”
Last fall, 18 female cast and crew members from the show accused Schwahn of sexual harassment, Bush included.
When asked why she didn’t leave the show, Bush explained that she didn’t think it was fair to negatively impact her own career due to someone else’s actions.
“First of all, why am I supposed to suffer and kill my own career because somebody else can’t keep their dick in their pants?” she said. “Second of all, there is a whole crew that people don’t know about. The whole time you’re a kid who is going, I gotta figure out how to protect my friends, and I don’t want to lose my job and I don’t want every person on our crew to lose their jobs.”
After the women of One Tree Hill released their letter, the women involved in Schwahn’s E! show The Royals released their own statement, which led to Schwahn being fired by the network.
“We’re not the only group of girls that’s ever had a boss who was a pig,” Bush told Cohen. “That show for us was very interesting because at times it was wonderful and at times it really wasn’t. Our writers’ room was in L.A., so we had plenty of time where [Schwahn] wasn’t on set.… We had great highlight-reel, coming-of-age, rom-com s— together, and then we also had like, batten down the hatches, he’s coming.”
Photo Credit: Featureflash Photo Agency / Shutterstock.com
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