Actress Sophia Bush alleged she was was on the receiving end of “every kind of abusive” treatment while filming a television show.
The One Tree Hill veteran made the claims during an episode of Monica Lewinsky’s podcast Reclaiming that was released Tuesday.
Bush did not name the show. But she gave several context clues (such as the date she left the series) so that one might assume she was talking about her years on NBC’s hit procedural Chicago P.D., where she played Detective Erin Lindsay. She left the show after 84 episodes and has previously described it as a grueling experience.
“I was in this great place [after One Tree Hill], and I was ready for what was next,” Bush said. “And I did this comedy that I loved … for CBS. Then I went to work on this other show that was on my bucket list and then I had this whole other trauma. I had a workplace ongoing trauma revolving around an unending situation with someone old enough to be my father. And I was like, what is happening?”
Lewinsky then asked if Bush was referring to an inappropriate relationship that was professional or romantic, and whether she meant emotional abuse or some other kind.
“Professional — and every kind of abusive,” Bush said. “When I look back at it, I had the opportunity after two years to go. And 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.”
Continued Bush: “The next two years were like physical hell for me. And to go through spontaneous illness, wake up covered in hives, to have a really crazy weight fluctuations, to watching my hair fall out, to struggle with insomnia, to have crippling anxiety as an extrovert who loves people, to be hit with anxiety in a way that I could barely be out of the house. If people touched me in public, I would jump out of my skin. I couldn’t talk to strangers anymore. I couldn’t be looked at anymore … I had to go to work ready for war all the time. I had to learn how to block a scene in order not to be touched.”
Bush said she left the series in April 2017, right before the rise of the #MeToo movement. That October, she says she received an apologetic phone call from “an executive.”
“I got a call from an executive apologizing for what they had done and not done,” she said. “And [the executive] said, ‘We’re very aware that we just made it out of that unscathed.’ And I was like, ‘Glad you did. I’m in so much therapy. I even diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But I’m thrilled you guys didn’t get dragged through the press, that’s great.”
Bush noted that she’s told specific details of her experience to others and then “watched the horror on their face,” which helped her realize, “Oh, I’m not crazy. I was just in an environment where no one wanted to hear it because it was a threat to the machine.”
NBC had no immediate comment. Bush has been back on broadcast television this season with a recurring guest role on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.
