"It was a very ugly situation on their part," Bush said of the producers. "I think they kind of lived for the drama."
Sophia Bush says she and Chad Michael Murray were on the receiving end of "deeply inappropriate" behavior from "One Tree Hill" producers following their split.
While appearing on Dax Shepard's "Armchair Expert" podcast Monday, the actress spoke about the short-lived relationship -- the couple were married after a year of dating, but divorced five months later in September 2005 -- and the "ugly" aftermath of the romance.
Sophia Bush Tells Andy Cohen She Never 'Really Wanted' to Marry Chad Michael Murray
View Story"The reason why 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 wanna talk to you about like, when you're fully-fledged adults who've done really amazing shit with your lives, they wanna talk to you about the dumb thing you did in college basically," Bush explained. "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."
After being asked about her split over the years, Bush expressed that she is "trepidatious" when speaking about it now and stressed that she only talks about her experience, not Murray's.
Bush and Murray, whose name was never mentioned during the episode, starred on the CW teen hit from 2003 to 2012. After their split, Bush said the producers were "really deeply inappropriate" to both her and Murray on set.
"There was no space to self-reflect," Bush said. "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 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 OK."
"It was opportunistic and ugly," she added. "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, you know? It was a very ugly situation on their part. I think they kind of lived for the drama."
You can listen to the full interview below.
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