The actress claimed that a man in a bar once told her that she's 'just a TV prostitute.'
Sophia Bush is recalling a scary incident. During an appearance on Stitcher Studios' Podcrushed, the 40-year-old One Tree Hill actress gave hosts Penn Badgley, Sophie Ansari and Nava Kavelin a real-life example of "one of the most f**ked up things our society does to people."
The conversation was centered around fame and how, per Bush, who largely keeps her personal life private, people believe, "You're a performer, perform for me."
"They treat you like an object or a commodity. They believe they're entitled to details about your life. They believe they are entitled to details about how you build your family. They believe they are entitled to criticize how you build your family," she said. "They believe they're entitled to criticize whom you've dated and when you've dated and what you've ever said and if you've ever left a bar drunk."
"But it's such an insane... heaping pile of s**t that we throw onto people," Bush continued. "We do it because we also work in an industry that presents this false notion of wealth, privilege, beauty and access. That's just not what most people experience. I think it's deeply toxic."
That whole thought process "really crystalized" for Bush when she was in a Chicago bar on St. Patrick's Day years ago.
"There was a guy at the table next to me and all my friends who walked right up to me and stuck his camera in my face to take a picture. [He] almost hit me in the face with his phone," she said. "I was like, 'Please, don't do that. Hello, I'm a person. Please don't do that.'"
"He went back to his table and just kept videoing and taking pictures," Bush continued. "After half an hour I was like, 'Dude, come on. Please stop.' We're just hanging out. We're human beings. I'm not a zoo animal. I see you, I hear you, is my thought process. He keeps going and he is getting rowdy. I can hear him swearing."
Eventually, Bush said she went over and told the man, "Hi, I'm a person. I'd like to shake your hand. My name is Sophia. You're making me really uncomfortable, man. I've asked you to stop. I'm a girl in a bar. You are a man I do not know. I don't wanna be videoed on your phone and my friends don't either. Can you please stop?"
"He was like, 'I don't have to stop. You're in public.' And I said, 'OK, but is there no world in which you can understand that you are making me feel like a piece of meat, like I'm not human?'" she recalled asking. "And he goes, 'I watch your show, so I pay your f**king salary. You are a piece of meat to me.' And I just went, 'What?'"
Bush noted that a girl at the man's table told him, "You really have to stop," before Bush herself said, "Do you understand the way you're talking to me?"
"He goes, 'You're just a TV prostitute,'" she said. "Then one of the guys on our crew flipped out. It started to get physical between these guys. But, I mean, he meant it. And then he starts yelling at me that he's a lawyer, so he knows his rights. It was insane. This is part of what it is as a woman. I was like, 'OK. I'm gonna go home.'"
As a result of incidents like those, Bush said, "I don't enjoy being in public anymore in such a greater percentage than I used to. Now I'd much rather be at home. I used to love to go out and be in the world."
"That's obviously a wild example, but it's not the first time that I've experienced [something like that]," she noted. "... It was terrible. Even thinking about it I want to cry."
RELATED CONTENT:
