Bush talked to ET ahead of her new movie about her personal and private life and why she keeps that out of the spotlight.
Sophia Bush grew up in the spotlight on One Tree Hill, but these days, she's keeping her private life a little more quiet. In an interview with ET's Katie Krause ahead of the release of her new film, False Positive, Bush spoke about keeping some things for herself.
"It's hard to have nothing that's yours. And when you are a person who lives in the public eye, everybody wants to pick over everything and that can be really tricky," Bush told ET. "And, I also grew up in the early aughts when girls were raked over the coals for any choices that they made. And I just was like, 'I don't think I like this.' I didn't like having my private life lied about. There were times where someone would send through an article and be like, 'Well, supposedly you're dating this guy.' And I was like, 'I mean, I would. Who is he?' Like, what is going on here?"
Bush wanted to shift the focus from her personal life and who she was or was not dating to subjects of substance, like women's rights, something the This Is Us actress is very passionate about.
"I don't know, just eventually it bothered me, that rather than doing what we've done, talking about work, substance, education, interview shows, what we believe in, what's going on with women's rights. It would be, 'What are you wearing? And how's your boyfriend?,' and it's like, 'What does that have to do with anything about my work, my life?'" she continued. "I really think the kind of gamification of people's private intimacy is just creepy to me. So I don't really hide what's going on in my life, but I don't flaunt it."
As far as her work life goes, Bush's latest project, horror-thriller False Positive, takes a look at the pressure women face to get pregnant and the lengths they'll go to to start a family. The film also stars Justin Theroux, Pierce Brosnan and Ilana Glazer.
"There's so much societally that we really put on women when it comes to pregnancy. We really pressurize it. We judge women who do get pregnant. We judge women who don't get pregnant. We judge women for when they get pregnant, we judge women if they don't want to be pregnant. There's so much of other people's opinions in the way," Bush explained. "And, I think so much culturing that makes us kind of do this really squeaky clean version of a reality that is incredible, but also life-threatening and intensely disruptive to a person's life. Not that you aren't thrilled about it [pregnancy], but your entire life is going to change. Your identity is going to change. And we act like it's like an Instagram moment. And I think that that sort of disempowerment that so many women are put through is a really interesting thing to explore."
The movie follows Lucy (Glazer) and Adrian (Theroux), as they find their dream fertility doctor in the illustrious Dr. Hindle. But after becoming pregnant, Lucy begins to notice something sinister behind Hindle's charm, and she sets out to uncover the unsettling truth about him.
Without giving too much away about the film, Bush touched on the real desperation some families face when conceiving and the scary side of giving up your power to make that dream a reality.
"So many people...Who are so desperate to figure out how to start their families and have kids and figure out how to begin that journey really can lean in to giving up their power," she said of the film.
False Positive premieres Friday, June 25 on Hulu.
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