Sophia Bush Comes Out As Queer

Sophia Bush is no longer holding back. In an emotional essay for Glamour, the actor came out as queer and confirmed reports that she’s in a relationship with former women’s soccer player Ashlyn Harris.

“I’ve experienced so much safety, respect, and love in the queer community, as an ally all of my life, that, as I came into myself, I already felt it was my home,” she wrote. “I think I’ve always known that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Right now I think the word that best defines it is queer. I can’t say it without smiling, actually. And that feels pretty great.”

Bush expressed frustration with the notion that she had to come out, but decided to do so formally for the sake of visibility at a time when LGBTQ+ communities are under attack. “There were more than 500 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills proposed in state legislatures in 2023, so for that reason I want to give the act of coming out the respect and honor it deserves,” she wrote.

The One Tree Hill alum divorced ex-husband Grant Hughes in August 2023 after a year of marriage. Just a few weeks later, she was linked to Harris, causing many rumors about the circumstances and timeline of her split. In her candid letter, Bush addressed the speculation, clarifying that her split was a long, emotional process, and had no overlap with her current relationship.

In fact, she had thought about calling off her 2022 wedding and decided against it. But she started to accept how she was truly feeling after undergoing fertility treatments over the next year.

“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 realizing the person I had chosen to be my partner didn’t necessarily speak the same emotional language I did,” she wrote. “I think I knew deep down that I absolutely had made a mistake.”

Bush has been friends with Harris since 2019, but as they went through divorces, they both found themselves relying on a group of mutual female friends. “It really took other people in our safe support bubble pointing out to me how we’d finish each other’s sentences or be deeply affected by the same things,” she recalled. “I asked Ashlyn to have a non-friend-group hang to talk about it.”

The couple made their first public appearance at Elton John’s Oscars party in March, after months of dating speculation. However, it took Bush time to recover from the “blatant lies” and “homewrecker accusations.” She wrote, “Just because I didn’t want to process my realizations in real time on social media and spell them out for the world doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t long and thoughtful and exhaustive.”