Sophia Bush's One Tree Hill audition story is every 2000s teen drama in two sentences
The actress has told plenty of stories about the show that made her famous. The new one is about almost not getting on it — twice, for opposite reasons.
In a book excerpt published by Variety this week, Sophia Bush describes her two auditions for Brooke Davis. After the first, she was told she wasn't "sexy enough" for the part. After the second, the note was that she was "too much." Same actress, same role, a few days apart — and no version of her in between that the room would simply call right.
She got the part anyway, and the part became one of the defining characters of 2000s television. One Tree Hill premiered on The WB in 2003 and ran nine seasons; Brooke started as the cheerleader stereotype the notes were apparently calibrating and ended as the show's most beloved arc, the character fans still cite as the reason they watched. Both of those casting notes were aimed at a girl who outgrew the entire category they were sorting her into.
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The notes didn't stop at the audition
What makes the excerpt land is that it isn't an isolated anecdote — it's the first entry in a pattern Bush and her castmates have been documenting for years, with receipts:
- 2003: two auditions, two contradictory verdicts on her body before anyone discussed the acting.
- 2006: Bush and Hilarie Burton later said showrunner Mark Schwahn threatened them into a Maxim photo shoot, telling them it was "what's best for the show," per Variety. The magazine's cover line marketed them as "TV's hottest troublemakers."
- 2020: Bush told Michael Rosenbaum's podcast she fought Schwahn over scenes she found inappropriate, via NBC News, including being put in lingerie scenes she hadn't agreed to.
- 2021: she and her castmates launched the Drama Queens rewatch podcast, which she has described to CBS as a reclamation of the show from its toxic environment.
Read in that order, the audition story stops being a quirky Hollywood anecdote. "Not sexy enough" and "too much" weren't two mistakes by one casting room — they were the operating range of an entire genre, which hired twentysomething women to play teenagers and then negotiated their sexuality as a production value for nine seasons.
The role Bush was twice almost denied over her looks ran for 187 episodes. In 2017, eighteen women from the show's own cast and crew signed an open letter accusing its showrunner of harassment.
Brooke Davis survived the notes, which is the fandom-friendly ending. The more useful reading is how close she came to not existing at all — and how many versions of her, on how many shows of that era, went to whoever the room decided was exactly sexy enough that week.
Previously we wrote: Girls reboot: HBO locks Lena Dunham and the original cast for five episodes — the one name fans want back is still off the list