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Cori Lenon
I think it's safe to say that Sophia Bush has become a household name for TV fans. From her career-defining turn as Brooke Davis on One Tree Hill to her newest role as Sam on Good Sam, Sophia has taken to playing complex female characters and sharing their stories with the world. Meanwhile, behind the scenes Sophia is a vocal advocate for numerous organizations and hosts two podcasts, one alongside her OTH besties Hilarie Burton and Bethany Joy Lenz.
Back in 2019, I had a dinner with Katie Wech. I was looking at properties to produce, and her wonderful agent, David Boxerbaum, who represents all of these amazing writers, was sending me some scripts. He told me she was working on a script that wasn't ready yet, but he knew we'd hit it off. So Katie and I went out to dinner, and she told me about three shows she was working on, all of which sounded amazing. I remember saying to her, "Well, I want to read them all when they're done, but that medical show, that's really sticking to me for some reason."
The story just sounded so interesting. The dynamic of the father and daughter and this generational shift between a family dynasty that mirrors the battle we're in as a society with, how do we allow more women to take seats at the table? You know, how do we create new verticals of leadership? How do we end harmful patriarchy, and what does it look like moving forward? I couldn't stop thinking about it. So when the script was ready in 2020, I read it and I just knew I wanted to work on it.
I'm one of those people who feels really allergic to bugging people. I just hate to be in the way. And what I've learned in the last couple of years is that that means everyone always assumes I'm so busy. I didn't follow up because I thought, I expressed that I loved this, so they'll send it to me. Then they were like, "Well, you didn't follow up. We figured you were doing something else." It was this hilarious comedy of errors. So I read the script and they said, "Can you come in tomorrow?" And normally, that would send me into a full-blown panic attack. I remember reading it and just thinking, This is so personal to me in some strange way. So I told them I could come in the next day. Fourteen hours later? Done. No problem. On it.
I mean, it's the most fun thing for me. It's one of my favorite genres of television personally. I've been able to work in genres that I love, and to combine a family drama, which I came up in and what roots some of my very favorite shows, with a medical show is so great. I come into work every day and just think, Is this real? It's very "pinch me."
We've been together so much that we were kind of like, Wait, we haven't all acted together onscreen in 14 years! It has been 11 years for Joy and I, and 14 years for me and Hilarie. It just so happened that Episode 8 of Good Sam was the script we were getting the day we got back to filming in 2022. I was doing press for Good Sam, and because of Drama Queens, everyone was asking if Hilarie, Joy, and I would ever act together again and if I'd have them on Good Sam. So Katie, my sweet angel of a boss, listened to all of the press I did for Good Sam before the premiere, heard me talking about wanting Hilarie and Joy to come play, and sent me the script for Season 1, Episode 8 and was like, "There's sisters in 1x08. Want them to come play them?" I was so stunned because they had to come film, like, the following week.
In our dissection of One Tree Hill with the podcast, Joy has talked about how, because she played Haley, everyone really thinks of her as this good girl. She's always wanted the opportunity to play somebody messy. So when I read the script for their episode, one of the sisters is a mess. I just knew Joy had to play her, and Hilarie the other one. It was just so much fun to have them here and to do it. Everyone on set was like, "Oh my god, y'all are like a tornado. What's going on here?" We just have a lot of energy, and we've built this over 20 years. It was so exciting.
Without giving too much away, one of my favorite memories is when they wrapped. I made the whole crew stop to just say, "I know some of you in this room understand who these women are to me." But as soon as I opened my mouth, I started weeping. I didn't expect to cry so quickly. I was sobbing. My whole crew was like, "Oh my god, are you okay?" Then Hilarie and Joy were sobbing and everyone was crying. It was very cute.
Oh, it's heaven. I don't know many people who've had the opportunity to take a wound and go back and clean it out, and then stitch it together beautifully. That's what this feels like. So many of us as women have had this uniting experience and this rallying cry of the #MeToo movement. We've lit torches and we're ready to go to war for each other. Not a lot of people have been able to go back and heal their experiences. When the experience that hurt you was also an experience that had other angles that you love, it can be confusing and it's really tough on the mind, your emotional recall, and your experience of trauma.
Drama Queens has been so special, and what's great about it is how much fun it is. I actually love that we can model that healing isn't sad, and that sanding away the sharpness of your trauma is also joyful. We all hear trauma and think it's big, ugly, scary, and too intense, when, actually, you can light all this shit on fire and have a bonfire. It's kind of great.
We always knew there was something to do because we've been asked for 10 years about a reboot. It's kind of felt like someone sticking a finger in the wound or like sticking a thorn in your side. It stings when people ask. There was just something about two years ago when we first started to [talk] about what would a reboot mean? What would that look like? Are people ever gonna stop asking? If they're not going to stop asking, should we start thinking about what that kind of project could be? It kind of felt like touching a hot stove. I think my experience with doing Work in Progress made me think about what if, instead of touching the thing we don't want to touch, at least not yet, what if we did our own thing? What if we used the fuel to make our own box that we could put this in? And it's been fucking gorgeous.
I really would love Michelle Obama. I was honored to do so much work in the Obama administration and work on both elections. Working on Let Girls Learn with Michelle was a highlight for me of my activism. We did a panel together years ago at South by Southwest. Talk about an amazing day. It was myself, Michelle Obama, Missy Elliott, and Diane Warren, and Queen Latifah moderated the panel. I was like, "This is the best day of my life." We talked about artists and activism and ways to use your platform. It was so beautiful, and that conversation has stuck me.
I'd love to go back and revisit some of what we talked about then and also hear about her experiences since and what's informing her now. She's just the coolest person. There's a picture of us from South by Southwest, like, double high-fiving. I was like, "That should be my Christmas card." Sorry, future husband, but this one is for me and Michelle.
I auditioned for Amy Adams' part in Catch Me if You Can. The movie was so good. and I remember being so stressed before the audition. It was either finals or midterms week when I was at USC. I remember getting there, and the audition was big. I just felt unprepared. I remember just the panic of being like, I don't even know if I should be here. Then I remember watching the movie, and I was like, "Oh my god, Amy is brilliant." So, yes, 100% I totally auditioned for her part. And now she's gone on to be nominated for like hundreds of Oscars, so obviously this made sense.
Jason came on, I guess it would've been a couple of weeks after me. We were so thrilled to get him; he's so amazing. I am such a massive fan of The OA. I was like, "Oh my god, Hap is coming. Hap is playing my dad." I texted that to so many people. And so many people, of course, didn't care about him in The OA, and they'd respond with, "Your dad is Lucius Malfoy?!"
I remember when Jason and I first met, I told him, "Professional Sophia Bush is going to leave the room for about five minutes, and I just have to talk to you as a fan. Then the real Sophia will come back." He was just dying laughing. I think we were pretty quickly bonded after that. Working with Jason is such a delight. I've done so many long-running series, and Jason has worked on so many individual projects. He has hundreds of film credits to his name. So we bring these two very different perspectives to work, and we're able to add them together. The sum total is very magical. We're having a ball.
We met a couple of weeks before Good Sam was on any of our radars. There was a Black AIDS Institute event, and Karamo Brown asked me to come and introduce him. He was winning an award that night, and I was so flattered to be included and to speak in a space like that. I remember being at that event, and this stunning woman ran up to me and was like, "Oh my god, you don't know me, but I know you. I'm from Chicago. I've never seen a person on TV represent my city in a way that feels authentic like you did playing Erin Lindsay on Chicago P.D." So Skye and I had this really sweet moment.
Then, a couple of weeks later, I said to Katie and Jennie [Snyder Urman], who is a Good Sam producer, that I wanted to come in and test everyone during the auditions. I wanted the actors to read with me, and I wanted them to know if we had chemistry. I wanted to see who I clicked with so they could see it too. They were kind of like, "You're going to come to all the auditions?" And I just thought, That's what a good producer does. Anyway, they told me they had a favorite actor for Lex, who had a different name at the time, and it ended up being Skye. So we already had this familiarity with each other in the audition room.
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