Sophia Bush on marrying Chad Michael Murray: 'It was not a thing I actually really wanted to do' (updated)
Sophia Bush may be over rehashing her short-lived marriage to Chad Michael Murray, but the rest of the world is not.
The 35-year-old actress appeared on Andy Cohen’s Sirius XM show and was asked about the romance with her former One Tree Hill co-star.
“Everybody’s been 22 and stupid,” Bush laughed. She and Murray, now 36, started dating in 2003 and got engaged the following year. “It was not a thing I actually really wanted to do.”
Bush continued, “Ladies have to learn how to take up space in the way that men are taught they are entitled to!” She said she learned that lesson the hard way.
Cohen pressed her on why she went through with the nuptials in the first place.
“Because how do you let everybody down?” she replied. “And how do you — what’s the fight, and when you have bosses telling you that you’re the only person who gets a person to work on time and 200 people either get to see their kids at night or they don’t because our days start on time.”
“So it was that loaded of a situation?” Cohen asked.
“Life is always loaded,” she explained. “What the public knows is never — it’s not the tip of the iceberg. Hilarie [Burton] and I used to laugh and we were like, ‘If we had a behind-the-scenes show, the drama would be so much f***ing better than the drama that the writers write… I get why you ask, but people won’t let it go.’”
Murray wasn’t thrilled to see his old relationship get rehashed. In a statement to People, his rep called Bush’s story “ludicrous.”
“Chad conducts himself in a completely professional manner and would never marry for any reason but love,” the rep continued. “Thirteen years since his divorce from Sophia, he has a very happy family life with his wife and children. He has completely moved on and doesn’t feel the need to engage in this type of behavior.”
Murray and Bush — then 23 and 22, respectively — wed in April 2005, saying “I do” in front of 200 guests. They separated five months later. “This is a difficult and unfortunate situation,” the actress said in a statement at the time. “I am glad this is being resolved sooner rather than later.” Bush tried to get the marriage annulled on the basis of “fraud,” but her request was denied and they were officially divorced in 2006.
Bush has stayed relatively silent about their split. There were rumors that it was over Murray being unfaithful … with Paris Hilton. The heiress’s boyfriend at the time, Nick Carter, later confirmed the whispers, saying that he then hooked up with Ashlee Simpson for revenge. Oh, 2005 — what a time to be alive!
Last year, the John Tucker Must Die star acknowledged the “trauma” of the divorce in an open letter about why women should stop seeking “the one.”
“In my 20s, when I was starting out my career as an actor, I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but one found me and became serious, even though I hadn’t planned to settle down until my 30s. But when the person you’re with asks you to marry him, you think: This must be happening because it’s supposed to,” she penned in a piece for Cosmopolitan.
“But I refuse to let that one relationship define me, which is why I’ve done my best to avoid discussing it for 10 years,” she explained. “The reality is that, yes, it was a massive event in my life. And the trauma of it was amplified by how public it became, which was incredibly foreign and bizarre to a girl who’d been just another college kid 24 months before her life blew up.”
Bush and Murray were forced to work together on One Tree Hill for multiple seasons post-split, so they had to be somewhat amicable on set.
“At the end of the day, we’re grown-ups, and I actually think it’s interesting that when people split in a way that’s unpleasant, they usually just go on quite literally hating each other — or the person in my situation hates the other person, whatever — but when you have to work with somebody for another half a decade, you kind of have to deal with it,” she said on Watch What Happens: Live a few years ago.
But when a caller asked when she was last in contact with Murray, she quipped, “That is such an interesting question, but my mother once said to me that if you don’t have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all.”
You can always count on Andy Cohen to get the gossip.
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