Sophia Bush Recalls Alleged Physical, Emotional Abuse on TV Set: 'Had to Go to Work Ready for War'

On the June 3 episode of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky, the 42-year-old actress recalled the trauma she endured on the set of a television series she joined after wrapping One Tree Hill in 2012.

While Bush didn't name the show outright, she starred as Detective Erin Lindsay on Chicago P.D. from 2014 to 2017 following her time on Tree Hill, and the timeline appears to line up.

Bush told Lewinsky that being cast in the unnamed series was a career milestone, but ended up being a nightmare.

"It was on my bucket list," she said. But once on set, she says it quickly turned into a nightmare. "I suffered every kind of abuse you can imagine with someone old enough to be my father," she shared.

The experience was so damaging, said Bush, that  her body began to break down.

"I had the opportunity after two years to go," Bush explained. "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."

Detailing the devastating physical effects of the experience, Bush said she "was in physical hell." The experience even spurred on a "spontaneous illness," that included being "covered in hives" and suffering from hair loss and weight fluctuations.

"As an extrovert who loves people, to be hit with anxiety in such a way that I could barely be out of the house; if people touched me in public, I would jump out of my skin," she continued. "I couldn't talk to people anymore. I couldn't talk to strangers anymore. I couldn’t be looked at anymore, especially in the work environment."

The actress also said the job changed her demeanor, making her more guarded than she'd ever been.

"Because I had to go to work ready for war all the time, I had to learn where to stand to not get elbowed in the ribs or how to block a scene to not be touched. It was just exhausting," Bush recalled.

She ultimately left the Chicago P.D. in April 2017, just months before the #MeToo movement exploded. She claimed that later that year, she received a phone call from a network executive with an apology.

"By October, I got a call from an executive apologizing for what they'd done and not done," she said. "And [they] said, 'We're very aware we just made it out of that unscathed.'"

Bush previously opened up about her decision to exit Chicago P.D. in 2017 on Refinery 29's Unstyled podcast, saying, "It was then that I realized I'd been drowning. It was then that I knew just how miserable I was going to work every day. I had to respect myself in a situation where I didn't feel respected."

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If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages; Calls are confidential and toll-free.