Sophia Bush recalls hitting One Tree Hill creator Mark Schwahn "f—ing hard" when he allegedly grabbed her butt
Sophia Bush, who was well known for her character Brooke Davis on the hit television series 'One Tree Hill' opened up about the sexual assault she faced at the hands of creator Mark Schwahn on the set. Last November, Mark was accused of sexual harassment and physical and emotional manipulation by the female members of the cast and now, the actress came forward on Andy Cohen‘s SiriusXM show, Andy Cohen Live, on Wednesday (June 13) to detail the allegations.
“We’re not the only group of girls that’s ever had a boss who is a pig,” she said of Mark. Recalling the days on her set, Sophia said working on One Tree Hill was a mixed experience for her. While there were times when it was really wonderful working on the set, there were "times it really wasn’t.” These days often included when Mark used to be present on the set.
“Our writer's room was in L.A., so we had plenty of time where [Schwahn] wasn’t on set,” she said. “When you have to be on a set day in and day out with somebody who is so vile, it’s a different story. So we had great highlight-reel, coming-of-age, rom-com s— together, and then we also had like, ‘Batten down the hatches, he’s coming.’" Talking about her own experience on the show, Sophia recalled an incident in which she alleges Mark grabbed her butt.
“My mom’s a crazy Italian lady from New Jersey. The first time Mark Schwahn grabbed my a—, I hit him in front of six other producers,” she said. “And I hit him f—ing hard.” This one response of Sophia makes her believe was the reason Mark knew that he had to stay away from her and she wasn't someone to mess with.
“You heard comments. We knew about things he’d say to people, we knew about the late-night texts, 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. She had to be moved. Then her boyfriend came and stayed with her for the next month and literally, like, it almost came to fisticuffs between the two of them," she recalled.
Despite this, Sophia knew that she wasn't going to leave the show because she deserved to be on it as an actress. “Why am I supposed to suffer and kill my own career because somebody else can’t keep their d— in their pants? Second of all, there’s a whole crew people don’t know about," she said. “It’s not fair to make everybody suffer because one person can’t rein their entitlement in,” she added. “So for us, it was a lot of that.”