It was every ‘shippers dream come true — at the height of One Tree Hill’s popularity in 2005, stars Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray got married. Only, when the marriage fell apart only five months in, things got predictably… tricky. And in a rare moment of transparency about that time in her life, Bush is opening up about her post-marriage experience.
“The reason why I don’t talk about it — a) is because everyone’s been 21 and stupid, but if you’re in our job, for some reason, people wanna talk to you about, like, when you’re fully-fledged adults who’ve done really amazing shit with your lives, they wanna talk to you about the dumb thing you did in college basically,” Bush told Dax Shepard as a guest on his popular Armchair Expert podcast.
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“Which doesn’t make sense to me,” she added, “’cause, like, in any other realm, if a CEO is having a meeting, no one’s gonna ask about the time they went to a kegger in college.”
Although Bush never mentions Murray by name during the podcast convo, she leaves little doubt as to whom she is referring — particularly when discussing her One Tree Hill work environment following the divorce. “There was no space to self-reflect,” she explained.
More: This Is Why Sophia Bush Really Quit Chicago P.D.
She also touched on how she felt producers were “really deeply inappropriate” to the ex-couple in the wake of the split.
“They ran, like, TV ads about it. It was really ugly,” she revealed. “They made practice of taking advantage of people’s personal lives. And not just for me and for my ex; for other actors on the show who would share, as you do when you get close to people. Deeply personal things that were happening in their lives, and they would wind up in storylines. It wasn’t OK.”
Rather, said Bush, “It was opportunistic and ugly.”
Where the show should have supported the then-twentysomethings during this difficult transition, Bush feels as though they instead looked to their bottom line. “When you run a show, you’re like a parent. You’re supposed to protect your flock, and it was the opposite of that,” she said. “And I imagine that was hard for him as well, you know? It was a very ugly situation on our part. I think they kind of lived for the drama.”
Although Bush rarely comments on her marriage to Murray, the subject did court a bit of drama in June, when Bush sat down with Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM Radio show.
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When her short-lived marriage to Murray came up, Bush told Cohen, “Everybody’s been 22 and stupid. [The marriage] was not a thing I actually really wanted to do.”
Bush explained that, at the time, she felt pressured by production and society to get married.
More: Sophia Bush Calls Out “Vile Creatures” on Twitter
In a statement to People, Murray’s rep responded to Bush’s comments, calling them “ludicrous” and saying, “Chad conducts himself in a completely professional manner and would never marry for any reason but love. Thirteen years since his divorce from Sophia, he has a very happy family life with his wife and children. He has completely moved on and doesn’t feel the need to engage in this type of behavior.”
Perhaps Bush’s softer remarks on Armchair Expert will create a bit of goodwill between the One Tree Hill exes.
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