SOPHIA Bush says she was told everyone wanted to see her “big rack” when she was playing a 16-year-old on One Tree Hill.
The actress – who is now 37 – recalled a heated conversation with the CW show’s bosses, when she pushed back on scenes she felt were inappropriately sexualised.
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The star – who played Brooke Davis in the WB/CW teen soap for its nine-season run from 2003 to 2012 – told Ashley Graham’s podcast Pretty Big Deal, that she fought with show runners about what was appropriate for a 16-year-old character.
“I fought a lot with the writers. I was sort of unaware of the power dynamics at play and I would just say things. I’d be like, ‘I’m not doing this.'”
She added: ‘There was this sort of really weird thing. You look back at it, at the time, I didn’t realize how inappropriate it was, but again, this was a long time ago. I remember my boss kept writing scenes for me to be in my underwear.
“And I was like, ‘I’m not doing this, this is inappropriate. Like, I don’t think this is what we should be teaching 16-year-old girls to be doing, and to be seeking validation this way.'”
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At the time of filming, Bush was in her very early 20s, but as she explains, she portraying a high school student.
In response to her refusal, Bush says her boss replied, “Well you’re not 16.”
“And I said, ‘But I’m playing 16, and if you want somebody to do it so badly, get somebody else to do it,'” Bush shares. “And he literally said to me, ‘Well you’re the one with the big f***ing rack everybody wants to see.’ And I was like, ‘What?! Well, I’m not doing it!'”
After this incident, Bush says she showed up in the next episode wearing a turtleneck “just sort of to be spiteful.”
“I was like, ‘This is just how I’m gonna dress on the show from now on if you don’t stop writing these scenes,'” she tells Graham. “I was really ballsy and I didn’t even know it. I just wasn’t wanting to perpetuate this sort of behavior that I didn’t think was appropriate.”
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Bush, who did not name the boss in her podcast statements, has previously spoken out about the shady happenings behind the scenes of her breakout series, One Tree Hill.
In 2017, the actress joined her co-stars and crew members in signing a letter that accused showrunner Mark Schwahn of sexual harassment.
Bush was briefly married to her One Tree Hill co-star Chad Michael Murray, in 2005, for five months.
She’s next on the big screen in horror flick False Positive, alongside Justin Theroux and Pierce Brosnan.
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