Sophia Bush Reveals ‘One Tree Hill’ Salary: ‘I’m Really Gonna Bum You Out’

Sophia Bush is revealing just how much she earned on One Tree Hill — and the amount is “really gonna bum you out.”

The 43-year-old actress, who played Brooke Davis on nine seasons of the hit show from 2003 to 2012, revealed that she wasn’t paid as much as people might think during Wednesday’s episode of the Networth and Chill With Your Rich BFF podcast.

“I’m really gonna bum you out,” Bush answered when asked about the money she made during her time on One Tree Hill, revealing that as a young actress, she didn’t have much room to negotiate her salary at first.

“You get hired, and especially as a young person, you don’t have a quote. And if you’ve not been a regular on something before, you have literally no quote,” she explained. “So when I started on that show, pretty much everyone was coming from something. Hilarie [Burton] had been a VJ, [Bethany] Joy [Lenz] had been on soap operas. I had been the philanthropy chair of my sorority at USC.”

“The difference in pay scale was wild,” Bush went on. “Once I paid 10% to my managers, 10% to my agents, 5% to my lawyers, paid a publicist fee, paid my taxes and then paid the $3,000 a month that my two-bedroom apartment in Wilmington cost me, I was taking home about $3,000 an episode.”

The actress clarified that because she was on a six-year contract for the show, she wasn’t able to “leave or ask for a raise” during that time.

Years later, Bush revealed that she and the rest of the One Tree Hill cast still don’t make any extra money from the show’s resurgence on streaming.

“What you really hope works for you in TV, even if you’re not making a lot of money at the time, is, well, we’ll get syndicated and we’ll get residuals. Except when we signed to do that wonderful show that we all loved, there was no streaming,” she explained. “Our show is syndicated on streaming, which means the studio that owns the show makes all the residuals, and we don’t.”

“That’s the breaks,” she shrugged. “Still a champagne problem.”

After two decades in Hollywood, the Chicago P.D. star said she’s now gotten more bargaining power when it comes to her salary. “It took me 20 years in this industry, doing 15 straight years of network TV without taking a year off,” she admitted, revealing that “literally, year 20 was the first time I got paid equally to my male co-star.”

“It was a fight,” Bush added. “And no shock to anyone who knows me, I won. I was like, ‘We’re not doing this anymore.’”