Sophia Bush Reveals Shocking Encounter With Fan Who Called Her A 'TV Prostitute'
Sophia Bush said on the "Podcrushed" podcast that a creepy encounter with a fan spoiled her enjoyment of being in public.
Sophia Bush said she does not “enjoy being in public anymore” after a shocking encounter with a fan who wouldn’t stop filming her and called her “a TV prostitute.”
The “One Tree Hill” star shared the unsettling experience on a recent episode of “Podcrushed,” hosted by “Gossip Girl” actor Penn Badgley.
“I had a beer and there was a guy at the table next to me and all my friends, who walked right up to me and stuck his camera right in my face to take a picture, almost hit me right in the face, with his phone,” Bush recalled. “He keeps going and he’s getting rowdy and I can hear him swearing.”
Bush said she tried to defuse the situation by telling 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?”
She said the man then got aggressive, and told her: “I don’t have to stop. You’re in public.”
Bush said she responded: “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?”
“And he goes, ‘I watch your show, so I pay your fucking salary. You are a piece of meat to me.’ And I just went, ‘What?’”
She said he went further, telling her: “You’re just a TV prostitute.”
“One of the guys on our crew like flipped out and it started to get physical between these guys,” she continued.
Bush described the situation as “insane” and said it’s a reason she doesn’t enjoy going out in public anymore.
“Now I’d much rather be at home,” Bush said. “I used to love to go out and be in the world, so I think that’s obviously a wild example, but it’s not the first time that I’ve experienced that.”
Bush pointed out a strange feature of celebrity encounters like this is that in one sentence, “people will say, ‘Well you signed up for this’ and the other sentence they’ll say, ‘We’re entitled to this.’”
She added. “I don’t think anyone is entitled to anything.”
You can hear the whole interview below.
Bush has commented before on how celebrity culture has made her feel like a commodity.
In 2017, she told HuffPost she didn’t like the way, “as a young woman on a television show, I felt like I was treated like a chess pawn.”
She added that it “sucks to be reduced, and it sucks to be talked about like an object and it sucks to be treated like a piece of meat. Like, it sucks.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
