Sophia Bush revealed the ways One Tree Hill allegedly would try to get out of paying the female leads — including lying that the show was about to go off the air.
During the Thursday, July 3, episode of “The Burnouts” podcast, Bush, 42, was asked whether she had an opportunity to negotiate her salary, to which she replied, “We weren’t really given the opportunity to do that. They would always tell us we were on the verge of getting canceled so that we wouldn’t try.”
Bush credited her “wonderful legal” team for stepping in before season 4.
“They just said, ‘Listen, we know none of the girls are making what the boys are making. But you cannot pay her a third of what the woman making the least amount of money on the show is making,’” she noted. “They really went to bat for me.”
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According to Bush, she was “finally” being “paid equally to the second-lowest paid woman on the cast” after the negotiations. “So under 20 percent of what my male costar was making on the show,” she added.
One Tree Hill, which aired from 2003 to 2012, was set in the fictional town of Tree Hill, North Carolina, and originally followed the lives of two half-brothers — played by Chad Michael Murray and James Lafferty — who compete for positions on their school’s basketball team.
Over the years, viewers got more invested in the brothers’ respective lives and romantic relationships, which allowed for their female costars, including Bush, Hilarie Burton Morgan and Bethany Joy Lenz, to have large roles on screen
“Part of the reason they like to make teen television is because they don’t really have to pay young people very much money. Because I had been an added character — even though I’d be a series regular,” Bush continued. “I was essentially told, ‘This is all we can afford to pay you. Take it or leave it. It’s never going to get any better than this.’”
Bush called it a “baptism by fire in the financial space,” adding, “You want to work so you say yes, but when you make money, 10 percent goes to your agent and 10 percent goes to your manager and 5 percent goes to your lawyer. Then you have to buy into your union and you have to figure out how to incorporate a business.”
While One Tree Hill was finding success on screen, Bush was struggling to make ends meet.
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“I threw cash at friends who had a 6th floor walk-up in the West Village. My two best friends from college moved into it and it was a two-bedroom apartment and I would sleep on the pullout couch on weekends when I’d fly up here,” she recalled. “People are like, ‘Oh my God, you’re the star of a TV show and there’s billboards everywhere.’ And you’re like, ‘I’m terrified about how I’m going to pay my rent.’”
Bush isn’t the only one to speak out about her OTH paycheck. Bevin Prince, who made regular appearances on the drama from season 1 to 4, opened up about how much she brought in.
“We were making $75 a day for 16-to 18-hour days. I was still in college and was still trying to finish my degree at the same time, which was really complicated for me,” Prince, 42, revealed to Bush and Burton during the “Drama Queens” podcast in December 2021. “Because we were displaced from Hollywood, I got to know you guys so well, and Soph, you especially were such a champion for me along the way with everybody. Then they started to let me do things.”
She added: “When I look back at it, I really can find things that I am incredibly proud of. I think one of the things that I am super proud of is my ability to show up and show up really hard. Like if somebody asked me to shake my pom-pom, I’m not going to shake it lightly. I took that $75-a-day job very seriously.”
Us Weekly has reached out for comment.
