Sophia Bush Recalls Alleged Physical and Emotional Abuse on TV Show Set

Sophia Bush says she suffered “every kind” of abuse while working in a toxic environment on her “bucket list” show.

The actress, 42, revealed on Tuesday’s episode of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky that while she was excited to join a television series after her nine-year run with One Tree Hill wrapped in 2012, the experience soon turned into a nightmare.

Bush didn’t name the show specifically, but did join the NBC police drama Chicago P.D. in 2014 before exiting the show suddenly in 2017.

On the set, Bush told Lewinsky that she suffered abuse by “someone old enough to be [her] father.” She recalled, “When I look back at it, I had the opportunity after two years to go. 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.”

While working on the set, Bush said she was in “physical hell,” suffering from “spontaneous” illnesses, hives and hair loss in addition to weight fluctuations.

“As an extrovert who loves people, to be 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,” she shared. “I couldn’t talk to people anymore. I couldn’t talk to strangers anymore. I couldn’t be looked at anymore, especially in the work environment.”

Bush remembered becoming defensive during her time on the show, “because 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,” calling the experience “just exhausting.”

Bush claimed she wasn’t able to exit the show until April 2017, just before the popularization of the #MeToo movement. But by October of that year, the actress claimed she got a call from an executive “apologizing for what they’d done and not done,” and saying, “We’re very aware we just made it out of that unscathed.”

Bush previously spoke to Refinery 29’s UnStyled podcast in 2017 about her experience on Chicago P.D., recalling a conversation she had with her bosses in between Seasons 3 and 4.

“I said, ‘Here’s where we are. Here’s everything you’re aware of. Here’s how I’m coming to you today. If something really drastic doesn’t change, I’m leaving at the end of the year,’” she recalled at the time, adding that, “because I understand how the business works and how women are treated — I said, ‘I’m giving you not two weeks notice and I’m not coming in here throwing s— and breaking lamps and saying I’m never coming back. I’m giving you 23 episodes notice. I’m giving you that much time.”

She continued that she approached the situation like that so there could be no spinning of her complaint as her being an “irrational female.” Bush recalled, “I’m literally sitting in front of you like cool as a cucumber. If this has to be like a big swinging d— competition, I promise you I will win. But know this now: if we’re not having a very different conversation by Christmas, then you know with 100 percent certainty in December that come the end of April I’m leaving.’”