Sophia Bush

Hello everybody, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dak Shepherd. I'm joined with Monica Padman. Hi.

Hi. Today we have Sophia Bush. You probably fell in love with her on One Tree Hill and then carried that straight on over to Chicago PD. And now she's in the attic.

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He's an untrusted. The last one we were listening to is when you guys interviewed Ike Berenholt. Oh my god, how funny is that? And the end of the episode takes like such a weird turn.

Which part? You got into talking about like having an uncontrollable erection because of a scooter you found in your garage. Oh, yeah, yeah. 12.

And I was like, this is where I thought that the shower was going to go. But oh, but I'm bored. OK. Monica.

I'm in addition to the Olympian. There's an anomalous number of Olympians who seem to get aroused during the medal ceremony. Because there's pictures. There's pictures.

There's pictures. I'm bored. It's so intense. Yeah.

I like it. It's kind of an autumn on a pia. In gorg? There's something about it that sounds like what it is.

Oh, sure. Sure. Sure. It gives me the little like, yeah.

In the back of the teeth where I'm like, oh, yeah. that one I can't. What's that? I use it for men.

Yeah. I always call male panties. Male panties. You also said panty dropper.

I know I have said that. I do use the word panty dropper occasionally. And I'm almost always saying that ironically, like I'll say like we're going to the Sandoo's tomorrow. And my sand car does wheelies.

I'll say like, oh, that thing. If I do a wheelie, that's a panty dropper. Now I'm very in on the joke. No girl on planet Earth cares if I do a wheelie.

Yes. And in my mind, I've convinced myself that it is some kind of an Afro-Disiac when it's just not. I mean, for a small sector. Sure.

I would say it's a small sector. It's a niche market. Do you suffer from that at all? Have you ever really been convinced your boyfriend?

He loves that I cook a Sunday dinner or whatever. And to come to find out, he was just getting through it. I don't know. I think I'm at the point where I'm pretty willing to look at my own shit.

Because everybody has things about them that are probably a lot. I make no mistakes that the things that might be frustrating about me to a partner are frustrating. Nobody likes that I am so hyper-focused on the news. That I take my phone everywhere.

I read, I'm reading news articles while doing other things that you think would need focus, but I can't. Does that how you fell down? Actually, the irony is that- Back story, let me just bring everyone up to speed. You arrived and you had a limp.

You had a visible limp. And you're in quite a bit of pain. And that's because you had an accident. Oh, yeah.

I took such a spill at home. And the irony is that I wasn't doing anything. I had this little jacket over one arm and my bag over the other. I had my phone in the hand that had the jacket sort of over the arm.

But it wasn't open. And I had an iced tea in my right hand. Go on. And I was walking out of the house saying goodbye to Jenny, my best friend, who lives with me.

And I was like, OK, I was like, OK, I was like, OK, I was like, I just, when I tell you that I ate shit, it was like, I took a step with my right foot. It went across my body to the left like I was doing a high kick, but I wasn't. And I fell in such a way that I landed on my right knee. I landed my right elbow and went into a box that was on the floor, which is now fully collapsed and crushed, because all of my weight fell onto it also.

But I managed to not spill the iced tea. But a very happy accident was that there was a collapsible box in your landing zone, which is for people not on the inside of Showbiz. That is what stuntmen are jumping off buildings into and jumping cars into. It's a big pile of boxes.

That box probably saved my elbow and this interview. Yeah, you know, it doesn't make me think of one of the funniest injuries I've ever heard is my buddy Tim Lovestead, who was used to be a cashier at Voms. He was just standing there ringing people up and out of nowhere. He was like, oh, in blue as ACL, just standing still, ringing up groceries, blue and ACL.

He's like, it could have been a more embarrassing. He was like standing, he was talking to somebody, he was ringing shit up, and then he was collapsed on the ground, screaming, and nothing had happened. That's a bull on our way. You want to be like throwing a football.

Yeah, that's a super bull. You want your injury to be kind of sexy. So you have a story. Yes.

And again, and this will be the last time I hijack your interview. My best friend Aaron Weekly, I called in this radio station and wanted him a trip to Tiger's Fantasy Camp in Florida. Tiger's, you know, the baseball team. And he got down there and the speech at the beginning was, listen, everybody, we want you to start slow and then back it down from there.

Because everyone at Fantasy Camp is in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. And they're going to play with real life tigers. And sure enough, Aaron said he saw like three or four guys below ACLs just running the second base. You know, they haven't probably sprinted in 20 years, but they're there and they're excited and they have the uniform.

One of the adrenaline, you don't realize your body is screaming, no. Well, your little inner child brain is screaming, yes. Yes. And you say he saw a guy running second and just he just collapsed dead, you know.

Not dead. No, no, no, no. The story took a hard. I thought we really did.

They lost three guys at Fantasy Camps or this story. Well, now something interesting that I learned about you today. And I want to know if this is one of these things. Because as actors, we sometimes end up putting things, I mean, granted, this is a long time ago, where you put stuff under your special skills.

Remember that part of your resume? No, that's a man. Your resume. On the back of a headshot, you'd be like, I can peer wet, or I do gymnastics.

It was always like your old like been around the block manager, your first manager who was like, you've been to a dance class? You're a balance winner. And you're like, well, that feels like a stretch. OK.

You're so right. My mind was just littered with lies. I could fence. I had like combat training.

I mean, in five plays I never was in. But it said that you do your own stunt driving. I do. That I do.

That you do. And where did that begin? I don't know what it is because I'm not particularly a fan of watching car races. It bores me.

But something about loving. And maybe it was the romantic idea of car racing really got me into as I started being a working actor and seeing how the stunt departments all worked into wanting to do that. And I had this bad ass stunt coordinator named Mike Owens on this movie I shot out in Texas in New Mexico, who's the guy. You know, I want to say he coordinated the driving on the Italian job.

Like he does really hard core shit. And you know, had choppers coming into do stunts and all kinds of I was just like, well, like with my little inner tomboy, I was like, that's not cool as shit ever. And so I started asking to learn stuff from Mike and then worked on a cop show in Chicago. What do you mean, Warren?

You're not still working on that? No, I quit my job, bro. You did? Dude, I'll tell you all about it.

Oh my goodness. But I was working on this show. And my stunt coordinator was like, oh, you're like actually a really good driver. He sort of took a notice of how excited I get about all that stuff.

And then he started letting me do more and more of the things. Like we were doing near misses and 70 mile an hour chases with the blacked out SUV that has the crane camera on. And they were just like, OK, so you're on the stunt team. Great.

And then an actor who I adore, who wasn't trying to be funny, but is very comedic, who was on that show with me? Who shall remain nameless? Because he'll be very angry. If anyone knows that he did it, got into an accident onset, literally going five miles an hour.

And I was like, bro, I'm doing stunt sequences with near misses with six stunt drivers. And you had to pull into a parking lot and do that. So then they put the kibosh on any of us, driving anymore. And I was like, the highlight of this job for me is driving and doing all of this.

So slowly, but Shirley Tom would be like, don't tell anybody we're going to let you do a take. So you grew up in Pasadena, which is very weird to me. Well, I grew up at LA proper. Like my parents' first house was on Fifth Street, right off Sweet Sir.

Oh, OK. Like that's Hollywood, right? Is that Hollywood? I mean, I guess.

For Mid-Willshire, do they call that now? Maybe. It was just very cute, generic, little World War II bungalows. Yeah, like sort of 1930s cute, tiny houses.

And I remember I have this neighbor, Lillian, who lived across the street, who was this old woman who was retired. And she made Dollhouse furniture. Oh, wow. She was fascinating.

And I would hang with her and her daughter collected vintage clothes. And she wound up starting this very wildly successful store that then became the place that lends collectible vintage to movies and super, super famous people. And both parents were into photography and one way or another? Yeah, my dad's a photographer.

And did Mom run a studio for a while? He ran his studio for a while. So when they met, my parents met because they lived in the same apartment building in Mid-Willshire, right off La Brea in sixth. And my mom had this giant doberman named Bouncer.

And Bouncer would always try to bite my dad. And Bouncer was like the most widely well-behaved dog. You could say anything to him. And he would listen to you.

And he would always growl and nip at my dad. And my mom was like, I'm so sorry. He doesn't have a problem with anybody. I don't know why he doesn't like you.

And I think Bouncer was like, get out of here, man. He knew. Bouncer knew he was going to be replaced by your father. But the irony is that my mother did it.

My mother grew up like super Italian family in Jersey. And she's like, you know, I moved to LA. She's like, here's this photographer wearing tight pants. He flips his hair.

I just figured he was gay. I figured we were going to be friends. She was like the female karate kid. Isn't that the story of karate kid in New Jersey, Italians moved to the Valley.

And I'll help her. Yeah, the munch. Yeah, so my mom thought my dad just was being nice. And my dad was like, I was in love with you.

Oh, wow. You and Bell are so similar. So even just thinking that. Yeah.

I was literally just saying that. In preparation of talking to you, you and Kristen are friends. You've been friends for, I don't know, a decade now or something, a long time. Your wife's a bad-out.

And you guys are pretty damn similar. I don't want to take anything away from your originality or hers. But I will say you seem to be almost carbon copies of one another. I love that.

People say that. And here's what's interesting is Bell's one of those people that I've known. And I see you guys at stuff. And so many of those things we have to go to are so weird.

And when I see you guys in a room, I'm like, yes, other insane people I can hide in the corner with. But I don't get to really hang with her because I never really am here. And so she's one of those people who I'm like, we are friends who never see each other. Right.

But from a distance, we're always slow clapping each other's stuff and whatever. And as someone who's in the eye of her storm, I can tell you it's no comment on her desire to be friends with you. I don't know that she has 30 seconds to add to anything. She has quadruple booked all day every day.

And that's just it. And there's something I think when you work in the world the way that we do as women who also have all the other things that ladies are saddled with. It's like you just, you know, there seems to be this, I don't know, just like this assumption that we're meant to do everything and be everywhere and service everything and support all the things. And it feels like a lot.

And I can't imagine, you know, you guys have a family. Like I get overwhelmed having dogs. It might also be because I'm single, so I don't have somebody splitting responsibilities with me. Sure.

But it feels like. I need a houseboy like me. I need someone that's there like, you know, just managing shit. Cool.

But I want to ask you, you, so you're very, very philanthropic if people don't know that. You're involved in 87 different charities and movements and all kinds of things. And you, it sounds like you feel like you're answering a call that you're expected to answer. No.

Oh, okay. So it's not that your womanness is the motivating force behind all that activity or is it? What do you mean by that? What you said is women were expected to go and?

Well, I think we're just expected to be all things for all people all of the time. Okay. So as a woman, and I noticed this because as we're talking about our group of friends, we have an incredible community that is really invested in each other and supportive of each other and willing to have big deep conversations and shows up for each other. So there's a lot of analysis of the world that happens around the dinner table and that happens in real time, in workspaces and whatever.

And it's just in the minutiae, you know, when we think about macroaggressions to microaggressions, for example, that women are on the receiving end of, a man who in our work, in our kind of workplace stands up and says like, this is unacceptable the way this is going, whatever, example X, stands up for the coworkers and the crew. People go, oh, he's, he's really, he's a dependist, badass, you know, and he's very firm. I hear that men are very firm. And women, when we do that, they're called.

Bitch's, people make flippin jokes about like, are you on your period? We get called difficult. And what we're on the receiving end of is different. We're supposed to go in and be the star of a show and everyone's favorite person and unbelievably, you know, nice to bend over backwards for everybody in the room, to the point that you're on spine breaks and if you complain that you're back is broken, you're in asshole.

And so the- Well, now I'm gonna suggest something very provocative that I'll regret, but I'm just now, I'm just now hearing you say that and I wanna think all of it through. So that's 100% true. I completely agree with you. And I've been on shows where there is a powerful dynamic woman who's not afraid to speak up and then I've heard people call her that.

And that's true, totally agree with you. But don't you think somewhere in this recipe is also the fact that you would care that people would call you bitch? Because a guy would go, no, no, no, this is a total waste of time, we're not doing this, no, no, go home on time, we're gonna do this, right? And now I've been that person.

And I actually think, well, some people are gonna think I'm a dick. And then I go, that's okay. I can live with like, do you think maybe there's also a secondary layer where we, men are maybe, and of course, societally, I don't think biologically, maybe we're a little less codependent in that way, that we're not as concerned if people are saying that. Sure, I see what you're saying, trying to raise it another point further, if I may.

Sure. One of the things I think is interesting about that is whether you're codependent or not, I mean, you go back into sort of psychology and as many of us have when you've invested deeply in your own mental health, you understand, like, was I a child deformed, insecure, or secure attachments? What was my home life? Like, what trauma do I carry?

That, to me, speaks more clinically to whether or not you operate as a codependent person. But what I think the difference is, is you as a man, and I'm guessing here, but it's a theory. If someone on set says, you know, he's really a dick, you're like, yeah, I don't care. I know I'm doing the right thing.

For me as a woman, if somebody says, well, she's really a bitch, I also don't care. I'm gonna do the right thing. I'm gonna say to my producers, for example, when we're shooting in below freezing temperatures and six of our PAs have pneumonia, and they don't care, I'm gonna raise hell about it. And I have and I never will not do that.

But the difference is men are societally sort of idolized for strength and for being dicks and for being bossy. But if women are bossy, their shrews, their cons, they're horrible. Nobody wants to be around them. Why won't they just kiss the ring?

There's a different set of ramifications and a different kind of follow-up set of effect for women who are quote unquote difficult. And that's more what I think is hard is that it might be the same feedback in the moment, but it accrues for us in a different way. Because women's bullishness is put into a negative bucket whereas men's bullishness is put into a bucket that has to do with strength. And you've seen so many actors in our business, male actors get away with terrible behavior for decades and people say, well, you know, but he's just so talented.

But what woman makes one very public screw up and she's like blacklisted forever. I think the market neutralizes that aspect because there are tons of actresses that are absolutely hellacious to be around and they're super talented and people go see their product and they just keep getting hired. I think if people consume your product in this business, you're gonna be allowed to work. Until the second you have a hiccup and then you're out, which you see, I'm sure you've been doing this long enough and I've been doing it long enough where it's like, I've been in the horse race next to a lot of dudes and some of them were dicks and some of them were nice and we've all had some humbling moments.

I've been lucky enough to been given second chances and so on and so forth. I think largely because I'm fun to be around on a set but the guys that were infamous dicks, they're out. Like the second they stumble, it's see you later. Yeah, well, and I think it's great that there's something that holds you accountable.

There has to be, but I just, I know what it is to sit in my communities of women and see that there are just, it's like there's more boxes next to your name than if you're a man in a lot of circumstances. And by the way, that's not me saying that life is not difficult as a man or our industry is not difficult as a man that men don't face unfair circumstances all the time, of course you do. Someone pointed this out brilliantly on Twitter, which is a great way to describe white privilege because I'm not always. I was gonna bring up a white privilege example.

I'm not always in love with how it's rolled out as a concept. A great way to describe white privilege is your life will be very difficult, but your skin color won't be one of the reasons your life's difficult. And so your life as a man will be very difficult, but being a man likely won't be the cause of those difficulties. Which I think is a great, for me, I don't know why that seems like a very non triggering way to phrase it.

Yeah, and I just had that conversation. I am, I've had like this very amazing out of body experience last week. And I spoke with one of my dear friends who is an activist and like just one of the most inspiring women on the planet, Brittany Packnett, you should follow her on all social media if you wanna know about sort of justice, racial justice, intersectionality, she's a legend. And so on Sanders, who is a commentator on CNN a lot.

And it was a very important conversation we got to have. And I really was honored to be in the room with those two women. And then past the conversation we were having as women, the conversation we were having about race, to be a white woman really sitting and conversing with two black women who I adore, idolize, respect and I'm consistently just so impressed with. And I learned so much from and to sit and talk about what allyship looks like.

And for me to be able to say to the women who look like me in the room, guys, I'm not saying your life is not hard and the men who look like you in the room, that doesn't mean you're helping me. I hope for some guys that look like you. There were some guys that look like you know, the long hair, but you know, it tried to do trauma hardship. All of those things are very real.

Your life can be inexplicably and wildly hard, but your race is not one of the things adding to your hardship. Hardship is hardship, but you start again, having these extra boxes that can be ticked when you are a person of color, when you are a woman. And the irony that people who are so afraid or who are operating in scarcity mentality, as I think we've all been consciously and subconsciously taught to do in the world. So everyone thinks they don't have enough, won't have enough, whatever the manifestation of that is, is that people say, you know, like I want to know where my white privilege card is, show it to me.

And I'm like, that's not, I'm not saying you haven't had it hard. What I'm saying is that the complexity that makes things harder for others is something you should have sympathy towards. And very often I feel like we're mad at the wrong people. You know, there are some things I think should supersede, quote, politics, red issue, blue issue, whatever, which I think is all bullshit America is much more purple than it is anything.

I totally agree with you. How long did you live in Midwelshire before moving to just South of San Sime? We moved up there when I was eight. Eight.

Yeah. And it was a tiny little town. Yeah, there were like 5,000 people there. It was dad taking photographs there, is that why you went?

No, so we started taking little road trips as a family when I was a kid and we'd drive up to California coast and my parents would find like some cute, weird seaside motel, we'd stay for the weekend. And I just always loved nature. I loved being outside so much. And my parents were really fell in love with Cambria on a vacation up there.

We would go up there all the time because you know, it's like a three and a half hour drive from LA. So I'd go up on a Friday night and come home on a Sunday night. You know, my dad's career was going well and the very notion of the American dream, they realized that in this small town, they might actually be able to find like a cute little vacation spot. They started looking around and finally, when they were able to swing it, they did.

And... Did he continue to work there as a photographer? Well, so what they did because they really liked the idea of me having this sort of like small town horseback riding on farm's life is my dad started splitting time and he'd work in LA for four days and come be with us for three days and then work in LA for three days and come to be with us for four days. And it was like charming at first and then it was really exhausting.

Yeah, yeah, that's rough. And you tell yourself, oh, I'm doing this for my family so they can have this idea like childhood, but then it seems like what is important about childhood is just being with your family, probably. You move back to LA and my parents decided that they wanted me to go to this all girls school in Pasadena called Westridge School for Girls. I remember this.

I threw a conipption fit. Cause I was such a tomboy. I was always out playing with the boys and like digging things up. And I just couldn't fathom that I was gonna have to go to school with all of these girls.

And I had great girlfriends growing up. But I think also my family dynamic, like my closest sort of cousins are a boy my age, a boy you're younger than me, and then a girl who's three years older than me. And we're all still the best of friends as adults. But as kids, we were like the three musketeers and she, Jenna was like, she was like the homecoming queen.

Like who hated us? Who thought we were just so annoying? So I think I had this, you know, your little kid brain makes the connections with a limited amount of information it has access to. And I was like, girls are so pretty and scary and I don't get it.

And the dudes, the dudes and I, like this is what's fun. You gotta figure it out, yeah. Yeah. And so I really was so upset about this.

And it wound up being awesome. You loved it. You came to enjoy being surrounded by women. Totally, especially as I got older.

Just the change that happens to your life, your psyche, your body, all of it, to not have any pressure around men, male attention, any of it. I mean, I went to school every day with nothing to do but learn. Yeah. It was really special.

I went with a buddy who went to an all-boy school and I went like as a guest one day to be in his class. And I was like, oh, the guys don't brush their hair. They're like a mess. No one's trying to look good.

No one's really showing off for any girls. It was very, yeah, it was incredibly different from my co-ed high school watching dudes were farting in class. No one cared. I was like, oh my God, these guys would never get a date if they were acting this way.

Do you think in retrospect you're glad that you went to an all-girls school? There's more gratitude on the scale than not. But on the flip side, I will never forget the first time I was in like a truly terrible relationship. It took me so much longer to figure it out and to get out of it than it should have because I'd never been lied to before.

I believed what the person, I mean, girls have little things but no one was competing for a boys attention what were we lying to each other about? Certainly some of the girls in my high school were like mean girlish. It took me a long time post college to realize that somebody I'd been friends with forever was actually just not nice. And when I finally started it out, my mom was like, welcome to the party.

I hated that girl since you were 12. She sucked, she was mean to you. And I was just like, oh my God, but that's a different thing than manipulation lying, whatever, I'd never gone through the thing where like in high school you're like, you have a boyfriend and you hold hands and you go steady. And then a week later you find out he's been kissing like, Jane, I never did any of that.

So I took so much at face value, I think because of a naivete that was born out of no experience. Did you like boys, did you want a boyfriend? Were you upset there were no boys in your school? I wasn't upset about it.

We had like schools that we would do dances with, whatever, I still had great guy friends through high school. Did you have boyfriends in high school? I did, my high school sweetheart was my best friend from camp since I was nine. Oh really?

He's like still the best dude, like one of my favorite people on the planet. So he didn't kiss anyone or lie to you? No, he was like a super super. So maybe you just made a mistake of dating a nice guy first.

Maybe, total focus date. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but I mean it. I just think my only relationship experience was with a really nice person. And relationships like you go to an all-girls school, you see like your boyfriend, maybe on a Wednesday night for a movie and you go have dinner and his parents talk on a Saturday.

You don't make it on the hallway and getting on the bus. There's no daily dynamic to be a part of in the same way. So I do think it probably stunted my emotional growth in those types of relationships. You know, you catch up.

Stay tuned for more armature expert, if you dare. You're basically dating in the workplace when you're in high school. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you're like seeing each other in between classes and stuff. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, and it's interesting because now that I would be helping pick for my own girls what I would want them to get. Right.

I mean, I would say good education, but it's very tricky. I got to measure like, what is important in life? It's a very short trip. It's over in a blank.

Right. Am I going to be really glad that I read Lolita? Or am I going to be like loving that I went swimming with my girlfriend after school? I don't know.

I'm not sure what's important. I mean, I would say probably both. Yeah, ideally both. That's you, you know?

Yeah. I really, I will never not be grateful for my high school English teacher who changed my perception of the world through literature and my communications teacher and my political science teacher in college. Game-changing educators in my life. Also, I hated chemistry.

I was like, I'm not going to do anything. I don't know how to do anything. That's the most dangerous thing when it occurs to you. I'm never going to do trigonometry in my life.

I'm just like, I'm just like, I'm just like, I'm just like, I'm never. I'm never. Yeah. I know it.

I'm sorry. The worst thing you can realize. Yeah. There were hours I wish that I'd been like, dicking around, having a good time in high school instead of in that class, but there's classes that changed my whole life.

And I think that's the point, you know? It's actually something that I've talked to Bell about is this notion that, you know, with our platforms and our job and this sort of megaphone we've been given, that part of the reason that we try to highlight a lot of really badass causes to people who are curious about philanthropy is because there's no way that every person who follows her or me or you on Instagram is all going to give a shit about the same thing. But imagine if we highlight 10 super cool things, ways to get active involved, sponsor or school, sponsor or teacher work on the environment, some of that is going to get to everybody. You know, there will always be somebody who responds to one of those things.

And so then you can really help to offer resources to people. And I kind of think that that's what it must be like to be, you know, obviously much more difficult. Hello. Like let's not act like this is a true comparison.

I'm clarifying for you. But I think about that for teachers that there's teachers who know that, you know, five of 20 students don't care about their class, but the 15 who do, they might be the kind of teacher who changes their life. Well, we had a really great dude that was just in here that books on the counter and Todd Rose who spoke dark horse and he studies at Harvard education and how basically the whole system's really suffering from the fact that we designed the curriculum for second grade reading. And then when you get there, when you've designed things for the average or the median educational level or reading level for a certain age group, weirdly it doesn't benefit anyone.

So it's like virtually when they do the statistical analysis, half the classes above the second grade reading level that they've said was average and then half is below. So it's really servicing nobody. It's leaving almost everyone out and then the education itself has to be variable, which exists now with technology. So you can be teaching a classroom of 22 kids on iPads.

The iPads themselves can evaluate the kids actual retention, all this stuff and then curtail the curriculum to their level. And that's really interesting. And so it's like we have these solutions. A lot of them are a lot different than I think traditionally how we think the problem is.

But how do you go from, you go to USC and you major in journalism, is that accurate? Yeah, I went for the BFA acting program. Oh, okay. Because I always wanted to be a doctor.

I was like, dead son, I'm being a pediatric heart surgeon. I was like, I was the weird kid who would do, you know, dissections in science class and ask Mr. Holman if I could say after during lunch to like do the rest. I was like, I need to understand how every part of the body of XYZ thing works.

And I really thought med school was it. I think it's a little bit of like a kid of an immigrant mentality where it's like, you're a doctor, you're a lawyer. Those are your options. You're going to go to college.

You're going to like make the family happy, whatever. And I had an arts requirement in school in this awesome all-girls school that I went to. There were two years of arts requirements in every semester you had to do a different kind of art and I put the play off to last because I had this friend Betsy who I'm still friends with from middle school. She is the radest, funniest, coolest chick.

You got to live up to a name like Betsy. You have to. Yeah, you can just be named Betsy. And like, you know, tall with like fire engine red hair, like, she's just a big personality.

And she was a really passionate musical theater kid. And so in my little brain, it was like that, the like singing in the show tunes and that that was theater. And I was like, whoa, that's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got obsessed with it. But like, I don't think that's for me. I'm like a nerdy science kid. And then the play requirement came and she and I got to do a play together and it was like the most fun because you're hanging out with your best friend after school doing rehearsal.

The thing that hit me was that it was the living version of every one of my favorite books from an English class that storytelling could be alive. And in real time, I was seeing the emotional response that it could have create in a person, the catharsis, the humor. And I was like, oh, this is really cool. What you just described your interest in it is so deep and beautiful and something I definitely see like a 30 year old professor appreciating about the power of the medium.

But I'm also going, you were a 16 year old girl at some point. You didn't want to be a listen Milano or anything. I was like a very nerdy child. I don't know if it like really, I wanted to be a female.

What do you even nerds? Nerds? Nerds? I didn't say like I want to be a doctor.

I was really, I was always really into meaning as a kid. My parents didn't really understand it. You know, I'll never forget when like I got the National Geographic six set box set about the world and I watched the tape on the Amazon rainforest literally so many times I burned the tape through on the VHS player. And I would sob when I would hear or like read a paper and see that the rainforest was being cut down.

And my parents were like, what does the matter with you? Sure. Like you're seven. Yeah, this is just how Christmas was.

I was a weird kid. But did you like TV shows? Did you like bands? Did you like backstreet boys?

I used to wake up. No, I was into like Paula Abdul and Nirvana and Prince. I grew up listening to Motown with my mom and my dad was like a little span. Yeah, I don't know.

There was something about the power of it, but I thought it was a hobby. So I started doing theater through high school. And then my senior year in high school, I told my parents I don't want to go to medical school. I want to go to a theater conservatory.

They were just like, fuck. You know, and I found out my mom. She's kind of weird since you're dad's a photographer. Right.

But my mom looked at my dad and was like, this is your fault. You made your fucking hobby in your career. Now she can do it too. You know, they were totally petrified.

My dad was like, Maureen, give her a year. She couldn't go. She's going to be so bored. Give her a year.

And so a year into being in the theater school when I was like, this is really not for me. Whatever this is, I'm not into it. I did drop out of the BFA program. I transferred into the journalism school and my parents were like, here we go.

And I was like, no, I just think that knowing what's actually going on in the world will make me a much better and more communicative storyteller. And they were like, fuck. So I doubled down. Yeah, I doubled down.

But it was interesting that studying journalism and political science and everything in the communication school, it did. And it really felt like it made me better at storytelling and relating to people. Well, how did you end up on a TV show? Because you got on one tree hill young, right?

You were 20, 21, how old were you? I had been 21 for two whole weeks. Oh, really? And had you been in stuff before that show?

Yeah, I worked on, I did an arc on the first season of Nip Tuck, which was super cool. Oh, wow. Wait, who are you? I loved Nip Tuck.

So Kate Mara and I had this whole thing together. Jolie Richardson, oh my God, I'm blanking on the name of the actor who played her husband as a songwriter. They were a couple on the show and they had a son and the son was like super in love with this redheaded girl who was Kate Mara, but Kate Mara was in love with her best friend who was me. Oh, yes.

Very, very, very. Yeah, we had this whole thing. We were like three high school kids who thought it might be fun to try to hook up and then I realized she hasn't in love with me and he's freaking out. And we have a sit down basically with all three of our sets of parents to talk about the fact that we got caught.

Was your first on-screen kiss with a woman? No, but that was my first on-screen kiss with a woman. And so it's a very fun point of whenever I'm celebrating Pride. I'm just like, been super proud to be in ally for as long as I've been on TV.

But yeah, Kate and I became friends and have stayed friends and she's the coolest trick on the planet. And I've done this HBO movie with Really Oda before that that was really fun and I did like a couple of really bad independent movies which we had done. But yeah, I booked the job in North Carolina to go to One Tree Hill and I almost didn't take it because I was like, but I'm going to miss my senior year of college. Like I only got one.

And my advisor Annie in the journalism school at USC Annenberg was like, are you out of your mind? You can come back to college anytime soon. It wasn't that with you. Like you go and you do this.

This is what you want to do. And you know, who would have known that it would be on for what felt like ever. Was it nine years? Nine years.

And when you went all nine years. You moved to North Carolina or nervous or both? I mean, all of it. You know, the idea of uprooting felt really weird but also really exciting.

Yeah, because that's normally the AGB at a college generally in a foreign land, but you were in LA. Were you in Charlotte? We were in Wilmington. Oh, okay.

And yeah, it felt scary and fun. And we all also did the point I was making like we didn't know the show was going to be on for almost a decade. I think we all would have done things very differently if we had, but you know hindsight. Like what things would you have been like we would have all been smart and like invested in real estate.

Oh sure. Yeah, bought a place. Would you just rent places or we stayed hotels? We mostly rented places and I have a little bit of like ADD and I felt very locked.

I was in to this place that was really little. So I would like move around all the time. I'd like, by the beach, live downtown, go to the beach, go to the middle of town, go back to the beach. Like I just was so stir crazy there.

I don't know if you've been through this. I would imagine you have because I feel like as a tactic they like to use. But TV bosses love to tell you that like you're on the bubble. Your show is one step away from getting canceled.

They want you to feel like you're a couple of the time. Oh, all six years of parenthood. They said we weren't coming back all six years. Exactly.

So like we're going to do a lot of things. You're on one of like the biggest hit shows. They tell you that you should be grateful to have a job, never ask for a raise and you're just never because it was a hit, right? Yes, but they loved to tell us it wasn't.

And it was huge. It was on the CW? Yeah. And still, by the way, like still has this I joke with people.

I'm like, I am Matthew McConaughey and Daisy and confused because I keep getting older, but the girls stay the same age. Like high school girls, college girls, waves of it. And it's so crazy. The best comparison to me.

There's this great English musician, Craig David. And he was like, yeah, I'm finally, I'm at the point in my career now where fans that are R-age tell me that they're 16 year old kids are like, you know, like, I'm done. I found this great guy's name is Craig David. And they're like, when I was your age, I was dancing in clubs to Craig David.

And he was like, sit down. You know, but like some of the kids don't even realize that it's not new. Well, you're lucky though. Can I just say that the opposite for me is the case where I run into full fledged adults, like 30 year old men who are like, dude, without a paddle, it was my favorite movie in sixth grade.

I'm like, oh my God, if you're, if you're favorite movie in sixth grade, I'm so much older than I thought. Oh, that's so good. Yeah, I can promise you the opposite isn't necessarily more comforting to see like a dude with grandkids tell you he loved you when he was a kid. I actually really am obsessed with when grandparents want to talk to me about like high school age character storylines.

Oh sure. 30 year old to be like, you know, I started watching with my grandd order and I just thought it was so great that you decided to get into, they're so cute and I'm like, you're my favorite fan I've ever had. Now it was all young people. Right?

And how many cast members were there of you guys? Oh my God. There were a lot of us. I mean, there was sort of like a core five, and then a whole, because we were in high school.

So there was a whole periphery of great characters and some came and went over the years and some stayed the long haul like, and you guys are all 20, 21, somewhere in there, right? You're all young. And you're all getting famous overnight, right? Yes, but it was different for us because we were away and we were in a very small town.

I would think that would make it worse. No, because- Aren't you more exciting in a small town than you are in LA? Yes and no. I mean, yeah, for sort of like, stranger danger, like people running up to you and grabbing you on the street, which happens to me still and I think I'm never going to get over.

It's very scary. That's weirder in a small town, but we didn't have the experience that like the kids from the OC or the kids from Gossip Girl had where we were being like chased around by paparazzi, getting invited to crazy events, going to crazy parties. Did you want to know that? Or do you want to go?

Or do you want to? Or do you want to? Or do you want to? We just like went to work at 4am and left at 8pm and like, you know.

Now how? Oh, this sounds so fun. I like this. Yeah.

Now we're being so young. I got to imagine 21-year-olds in general aren't going to be crazy, benevolent with sharing. Was there a bit of like controversy over who? Yeah, competition, who's more famous?

Oh my. That kind of stuff was like, did it get dicey? It seemed like a lot to give. Honestly, not in the way I think it could have.

I think there was a little bit of that that more came from insensitivity on our like grown-up producers' parts. Like, there's certain things that should probably be reserved for private one-on-one conversations with actors and like shouldn't be announced in front of everyone because it doesn't feel good to hear that like someone's testing through the roof. You know, like that's not a, it doesn't feel great to be like, cool. Now I'm getting, you know, like looked out or whatever.

They didn't do a great job with some of that. But for the most part, that wasn't really an issue with us. What sort of came to light later was like, and I don't know if you saw, you know, the whole thing that happened last fall or not, but all of us girls were the first cast to like write a cast letter about the sort of predatory environment on a set. And so what was interesting for us was that we found out later in addition to just like being a total piece of shit.

There was this thing going around where, you know, everyone loved to talk about the friends cast about their renegotiation. Oh, right now they all did it as a team. This hit show and they were all the best of friends and they were renegotiated together and whatever. So forget the fact that when friends was on there were like five TV channels and they got 23 million viewers a week, like none of us could pay for that now.

You could like be doing like crazy sacrifices to the devil if you believe in that shit and you'd still never have 23 million. But like the, the impossibility of it just makes me laugh. Anyway, but there was this sort of thing that I heard from a lot of people back then that was like, oh yeah, all the bosses were like, you gotta get in the middle, like don't let your cast get too tight. Like, and then they'll fuck you over.

It was like a whole thing. So we found out later that our boss really liked to talk a lot of shit. It wasn't true. They tried to start us out.

Each of us about the other. And what we realize now sort of as a cast being closer than ever is there were times when like things were perfectly copacetic and whatever on set, but we all really sort of had our own groups of friends. We didn't spend as much social time together after a while as we did in the beginning and luckily we sort of got to the bottom of that and we were like, oh, watch us now. Like we're gonna hang out all the time.

So we were able to undo that. But even when we weren't like, you know, party five, there wasn't animosity. There wasn't. That's good.

There was just more of a like, you do your thing. I'll do my thing. You fell in love with one of your co-stars that you got married to one of them. Do what we really want to discuss this one?

I just learned this yesterday. The reason that I don't talk about it A is because everyone's been 21 and stupid. But if you're in our job, for some reason, people want to talk to you about like when you're fully fledged adults who've done really amazing shit with your lives. They want to talk to you about the dumb thing you did in college basically, which doesn't make sense to me because like in any other realm, if a CEO is like having a meeting, no one's going to ask about like the time they went to a kegering college.

Well, can I really quickly be super clear with you? Why I asked? No, because you learned a thing. Well, more than that.

I can't learn anything from your victory. If you win an Emmy and I'm in America, I can't relate to that. I'm not going to win an Emmy. I can relate to making a mistake and getting married and getting out of that and then be shamed written by that and wondering like, fuck, I'm still in that spot.

How did you how do you grow out of that? What are the tools you use? Like your victories don't teach me anything. Absolutely.

But what's complex about this issue for me is that the person who I was 21 and stupid with is also an actor. And I got asked about this on a radio show back in the summer. And I talked about my experience. I said like, you know, when you're a kid and you realize you're making a mistake and you feel pressured and all this stuff, I talked about this only from my perspective.

I don't speak my ex's name. I don't like I'm not talking about anybody else's experience but my own. And what it was blown up into and what it was made into. Oh, sure.

I'm very trepidatious. Oh, for sure. I'm speaking about it because again, the irony is that, you know, it was made into the story that everybody serviced for his opinion, but not for mine. All I'm doing is talking about my experience.

And can I just tell you, I have zero interest in him. I don't even know his name. No, totally. I have zero interest in the gossip that happened.

I don't know what happened. And by the way, all I'm ever interested in is what your side of the street was and how you cleaned up and changed your side of the street. Because what I don't even know who the guy is. I don't know if he murdered someone, even if he murdered someone.

There's nothing for you to fix about that. You can't change another person, but you need to do some things to ensure that you're never going to end up marrying a murderer. And that's what's of interest to me. So I had a girlfriend of nine years who I still love.

She's the most wonderful person in the world. And the first year and a half, we were broken up. I could have listed to you everything she did wrong in that relationship and why she caused the breakup. But then when all that dissipated and I was no longer hurt and angry, I started going, oh, I really fucked up here.

I fucked up there. That's the only thing that's relevant because I'm not in charge of changing her for the rest of her life. So she has great relationships going forward. I'm in charge of changing Dax and making sure that I'm very honest and objective about what role I played in it.

So I'm only interested in your role. You already kind of hit on it a little bit, which is you probably didn't have a bunch of relationships in high school that you would have maybe normally had. So you didn't learn to look for red flags. It sounds like.

And there was some level up. Maybe also, if you're really critical, it's like maybe you believed in some romantic notion that you bought into. I think I was a really naive kid. And I think, and maybe it is that story of change.

Maybe it's like some weird morphing of that like American dream idea that you can like come somewhere and you can start over and you can make something of yourself. There's romance in that. And I think there's romance in that in a relationship. So often what's motivating you to like somebody is your own insecurity.