“One Tree Hill” star Sophia Bush is sharing new details about showrunner Mark Schwahn’s bad behavior.
“The first time Mark Schwahn grabbed my ass I hit him in front of six other producers. And I hit him f—ing hard,” the actress said on Andy Cohen’s “Andy Cohen Live” SiriusXM show.
Bush said that she found out years later Schwahn called her “entitled” for avoiding his touch.
“And he came back to LA and I was told years later by one of the then writers who became an EP that he came back being like, ‘That f—king entitled b—- who does she think she is,’” she explained. “And this very sweet man named Mike, who I love and who is like a ride or die for me, was like, ‘Maybe you just shouldn’t touch the girls.’ And, you know, Mark gave him the option of shut up and keep your job or get out.”
“I mean look, we’re not the only group of girls who have had a boss who is a pig,” she said, adding that she wanted to specify that “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Which really applies to our country right now, too, it’s like everything is a dumpster fire.”
“That show for us was very interesting because at times, it was wonderful, and at times it really wasn’t,” she continued. “Our writer’s room was in LA, so we had plenty of time where he wasn’t on set… So we had sort of highlight-reel, coming-of-age, romcom sh– together, and then we also had, like, batten down the hatches, he’s coming.”
She added that it was “unhealthy” for everybody, but at 21, she didn’t know better.
“It was very clear to him to stay away from me,” she said after the hitting incident. But that didn’t stop the showrunner for going after other women who worked on the drama. “We knew when he was super obsessed with one girl on our show that he started trying to bang down her hotel room door in the middle of the night.”
Last November, Bush and several of her female co-stars, including Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz, released a joint statement saying they had also been “psychologically and emotionally” by the Schwahn, calling it “an open secret.”
“Many of us were, to varying degrees, manipulated psychologically and emotionally. More than one of us is still in treatment for post-traumatic stress,” the statement read. “Many of us were put in uncomfortable positions and had to swiftly learn to fight back, sometimes physically, because it was made clear to us that the supervisors in the room were not the protectors they were supposed to be.
“Many of us were spoken to in ways that ran the spectrum from deeply upsetting, to traumatizing, to downright illegal,” it went on. “And a few of us were put in positions where we felt physically unsafe. More than one woman on our show had her career trajectory threatened.”
Attempts to reach Schwahn for comment were unsuccessful.
Listen to the full clip above.