Sophia Bush Reveals Why She Really Left 'Chicago P.D.'

Sophia Bush is finally opening up about the circumstances surrounding her surprise departure from NBC's Chicago P.D. Slated to appear in seven seasons of the cop procedural, Bush left the show after only four. During an appearance on the podcast Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, the actress revealed the environment behind the scenes was not conducive to her personal health and happiness anymore. 

"I realized that as I was thinking I was being the tough guy, doing the thing, showing up to work, I programmed myself to tolerate the intolerable," Bush explained. "I quit because, what I’ve learned is I’ve been so programmed to be a good girl and to be a workhorse and be a tugboat that I have always prioritized tugging the ship for the crew, for the show, for the group, ahead of my own health … My body was, like, falling apart, because I was really, really unhappy."

"I internalized and sort of like, inhabited that role of ‘pull the tugboat’ to the point where just because I'm unhappy or I'm being mistreated or I'm being abused at work, I’m not gonna f—k up this job for all these people and what about the camera guy whose two daughters I love and this is how he pays their rent? It becomes such a big thing," she continued. "When your bosses tell you that if you raise a ruckus, you’ll cost everyone their job, you believe them."

Bush did her best to stick around and make the best of a bad situation. Ultimately, though, the environment on set did not improve and Bush decided the best thing to do was quit. There was pushback from her bosses at first. They told her they would not let her out of her contract early. "I said, ‘OK, you can put me in the position of going quietly of my own accord or you can put me in the position of suing the network to get me out of my deal and I’ll write an op-ed for The New York Times and tell them why.'" 

"Nearing my tenure there, I was probably difficult to be around because I was in so much pain and I felt so ignored,” Bush continued. "I feel like I was standing butt naked, bruised and bleeding in the middle of Times Square, screaming at the top of my lungs and not a single person stopped to ask if they could help me."

While working on Chicago P.D., Bush said she experienced "a consistent onslaught barrage of abusive behavior. You start to lose your way when someone assaults you in a room full of people and everyone literally looks away, looks at the floor, looks at the ceiling, and you’re the one woman in the room and every man who’s twice your size doesn’t do something."

Photo: Getty


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