Sophia Bush Recalls the "Ugly" Effects of Her Divorce from Chad Michael Murray
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Sophia Bush isn’t keen on discussing her short-lived marriage to One Tree Hill co-star Chad Michael Murray — and with good reason.
Back in June, Bush inadvertently stirred up some OTH-level drama when she implied that the marriage was something she was pressured into by the show’s producers. Murray quickly intercepted his ex’s volley, releasing a statement in which he called her claims “ludicrous.” He and his current wife, Sarah Roemer, then continued to fan the flames with some since-deleted social media jabs.
So when Dax Shepard asked Bush about the split during an episode of his Armchair Expert podcast, her response was understandably peeved. “Are we really going to discuss this one?” she asked, before outlining her reluctance.
"The reason why I don't talk about it, A. is because everyone's been 21 and stupid,” she began, “but if you're in our job, for some reason, people want to talk to you about like, when you're fully-fledged adults who've done really amazing s—t with your lives, they want to talk to you about the dumb thing you did in college basically, which doesn't make sense to me, '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."
Bush also noted how her previous quotes (discussed above), were misinterpreted.
“What’s complex about this issue for me is the person I was 21 and stupid with is also an actor,” she said. “And I got asked about this on a radio show back in the summer, and I talked about my experience. I don’t speak my ex’s name, I’m not talking about anybody else’s experience but my own, and what it was blown up into, and what it was made into … It was made into this story that everybody serviced for his opinion, and not for mine. All I’m doing is talking about my experience.”
The actress, who went on to star in Chicago P.D., said she was “a really naïve kid” at the time of her marriage, and in part credits the ordeal to her quick ascension to fame.
“Being a super nerdy kid, and suddenly you’re on TV and this is happening, and one of the cool people you work with thinks you’re awesome … There’s really base brain stuff there,” she explained.
RELATED: Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray Are Giving Us More Drama Than One Tree Hill Ever Had
After just five months of marriage, Murray and Bush announced their separation in September 2005. They’d spend the next four years working together. “There was no space to self-reflect,” she told Shepard of the situation on set.
According to Sophia, the show’s producers (which include disgraced showrunner Mark Schwahn) didn’t make the uncomfortable dynamic any easier.
“[The producers] were really deeply inappropriate to both of us about it,” she shared. “They ran like TV ads about it. It was really ugly. 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 deeply personal things that were happening in their lives. They would wind up in storylines. It wasn’t OK. I imagine that was hard for [Murray] as well. It was a very ugly situation, on their part.”
