Sophia Bush recalls unnerving encounter with aggressive fan who called her a 'TV prostitute'
Sophia Bush is opening up about an uncomfortable encounter with a man at a bar who wouldn't stop recording her.
On Wednesday's episode of Podcrushed, the Stitcher Studios podcast hosted by Penn Badgley, Sophie Ansari, and Nava Kavelin, the One Tree Hill alum shared details about the confrontation and said that she no longer wanted to be viewed as "nice" in the face of such situations.
"I'm not a zoo animal," Bush said. "I finally go over and I say, 'Hi, I'm a person. I'd like to shake your hand. My name is Sophia. You're making me really uncomfortable, man. I've asked you to stop. I'm a girl in a bar. You are a man I do not know. I don't wanna be videoed on your phone. And my friends don't either. Can you please stop?'"
Shedrick Pelt/Getty Images Sophia Bush
The man had a sour response and replied, "'I don't have to stop. You're in public,'" Bush said. "And I said, 'Okay, but is there no world in which you can understand that you are making me feel like a piece of meat, like I'm not human?' And he goes, 'I watch your show, so I pay your f—ing salary. You are a piece of meat to me.' And I just went, 'What?'"
Bush later asked, "'Do you understand the way you're talking to me?'" To which the man replied, "'You're just a TV prostitute,'" she said.
"I just don't know what we're doing here if we're not figuring out how to be here together in a better way," she later added of the ways we interact with one another. "I just don't know how we go quietly. So I'd much rather people say, 'God, she has a lot to say,' or 'She is a pain in the a—,' than 'She seems nice,'" Bush said. "I don't wanna be nice. I wanna be here with you, with us, for real, because we don't get to be here for that long in the grand scheme of things."
During the interview, Bush revisited the ups and downs of her time on teen drama One Tree Hill, which ran for nine seasons between 2003 and 2012 on The WB and the rebranded CW. The stars, including Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz, have been vocal about the turmoil on set, accusing series creator Mark Schwahn of sexual harassment and physical and emotional manipulation in a joint letter released in 2017 that was signed by 15 other women who worked on the hit series.
Listen to Bush's Podcrushed interview in full above.
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