“I think they kind of lived for the drama.”
Sophia Bush has spoken about the “ugly” aftermath of her split from her One Tree Hill co-star and ex-husband, Chad Michael Murray.
The 36-year-old, who played Brooke Davis, spoke candidly during an interview on Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert.
She claimed the the producers had exploited the breakdown of their relationship while the show was on TV, as she spoke about the “very ugly” situation.
She said:
“The reason that 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 want to talk to you about like, when you’re fully-fledged adults who’ve done really amazing s**t with your lives, they wanna 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.
“What’s complex about this issue for me is that the person who I was 21 and stupid with is also an actor.
“Being a super nerdy kid and suddenly you’re on TV and all this stuff is happening and one of the cool people you work with thinks you’re awesome, there’s really base brain stuff there.
“I think that for me, it took me a long time to do the kind of inventory you’re talking about in the after effect. And I continued to be in a place of work with my ex.”
The pair first met on the set of the WB show, before they started dating in 2003. In May the following year, Murray popped the question while they were in Australia. He proposed on a tennis court filled with 20 bouquets of roses, as well as hundreds of candles spelling out a special message for her.
Bush and Murray exchanged handwritten vows in April 2005 in a ceremony in Santa Monica. They announced their separation in September that year, after five months of marriage. Their divorce was finalised the following December.
The pair remained co-stars until One Tree Hill’s sixth season, which began in 2008 – and was the last full season both Murray and their co-star, Hilarie Burton, appeared in.
On the breakup, Bush said:
“There was no space to self-reflect.
“There was like, ‘This is my integrity, this is my job, I will not falter for one second or one minute ever on this set. I will be the most f***ing professional person anyone has ever seen.”
She went on to say that producers had been “really deeply inappropriate” to both of them about the split while they were on set.
She continued:
“They ran 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, like 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 okay.
“It was opportunistic and ugly and when you run a show, you’re like a parent. You’re supposed to protect your flock and it was the opposite of that.
“And I imagine that was hard for him as well. It was a very ugly situation on their part. I think they kind of lived for the drama.”
