Rosario Monachino
Sophia Bush has come out as queer and made her red carpet debut alongside her famous new girlfriend.
The One Tree Hill alum, 41, has starred in multiple successful TV shows and films over the years – including Chicago P.D. and The Incredibles 2.
Now, Bush is hitting the headlines after coming out as queer and being spotted in public with her new celebrity girlfriend.
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The Good Sam actress has been married twice – first to One Tree Hill co-star Chad Michael Murray in 2005.
However, the marriage only lasted a few months and the couple separated by the end of the year with Bush filing for an annulment in early February 2006.
This was denied and instead, the pair were granted a divorce in December of the same year.
Reflecting on her marriage during an episode of Watch What Happens: Live, Bush said: “We were two stupid kids who had no business being in a relationship in the first place. To all the other co-stars who’ve worked it out, more power to you.”
She would later start dating businessman Grant Hughes in 2020 – with the couple getting engaged in 2021.
They married in June the following year but, 13 months later, Bush filed for divorce, with a source close to the pair telling Entertainment Tonight that they were ‘better off as friends’.
“They weren’t getting enough time with each other before their breakup,” the source explained. “But it wasn’t ugly and they are still supporting each other, want each other to be happy, and for their nonprofit to continue to thrive.”
Together, the pair founded The Bush Hughes Foundation For Progress, established to ‘support organisations and individuals working for equity, social justice, and progress in the City of Tulsa’, according to the nonprofit’s website.
However, in a recent cover story with Glamour, Bush revealed that she was close to calling off the wedding and ‘felt nothing’ when her ex-husband celebrated their anniversary on Instagram.
“I kept repeating the adages we all know so well: Relationships are hard. Marriage takes compromise. You know the rest. And so I got married,” Bush wrote.
In her candid essay, the actress proudly came out as queer – stating that she can ‘finally breathe’.
“I don’t think I can explain how profound that is,” she continued. “I feel like I was wearing a weighted vest for who knows how long. I hadn’t realised how heavy it was until I finally just put it down.
“This might sound crazy — but I think other people in trauma recovery will get it — I am taking deep breaths again. I can feel my legs and feet. I can feel my feet in my shoes right now. It makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time.”
Following her divorce from Hughes, there was speculation about why the marriage ended but Bush has used her platform to set the story straight, claiming that no one knew what was going on behind the scenes.
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She spoke openly about the ‘heartbreak’ she endured while going through the fertility process – which Bush describes as the ‘clarifying experience of her life’.
The Stay Alive actress penned: “I was trying to get through months of endless ultrasounds, hormone shots, so many blood draws that I have scar tissue in my veins, and retrieval after retrieval, while simultaneously realising the person I had chosen to be my partner didn’t necessarily speak the same emotional language I did.
“Just because I didn’t want to process my realisations on social media doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t long and thoughtful and exhaustive.”
But looking at the positives, Bush said she now has ‘real joy’ since coming to terms with her sexuality.
“It took me 41 years to get here,” she shared. “When I take stock of the last few years, I can tell you that I have never operated out of more integrity in my life. I hope that’s clear enough for everyone speculating out there, while being as gentle as I possibly can be.”
Bush announced in the Glamour piece that she is dating former USWNT (United States Women’s National Team) football player Ashlyn Harris.
The former goalkeeper had recently split from her partner, fellow US teammate Ali Krieger and, when the internet found out about the relationship, Bush almost immediately faced allegations that she was a ‘home-wrecker’. In her cover story, she clarifies that the relationship was just something that happened entirely coincidentally.
Bush and Harris first met in 2019. When Bush moved back to her home in LA while she was preparing to file for divorce in 2023, ‘groups of women in [her] life started opening up about issues they were going through in their own homes’.
Ashlyn Harris, who was in the process of figuring out her own split from her wife at the time, was one of those women.
She penned: “She’d been such a kind ear for those of us who opened up about our problems during a shared weekend of speaking engagements at a fancy conference in Cannes, and soon it became clear that she needed our ears too.
“I didn’t expect to find love in this support system. I don’t know how else to say it other than I didn’t see it until I saw it.
“What I saw was a friend with her big, happy life. And now I know she thought the same thing about me.”
After the pair’s first ‘non-friend-group hang’, a four-and-a-half-hour-long meal, which Bush describes as ‘one of the most surreal experiences of my life’, she knew Harris was the woman for her.
The pair recently made their red carpet debut when they attended the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and fans have been praising the pair.
“Damn they’re beautiful,” writes one person.
A second fan adds: “Find someone the way Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris look at each other.”
Someone else comments: “Life’s too short to not be happy.”
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