Sophia Bush is setting the record straight about when she started dating Ashlyn Harris amid rumors about overlap with their past marriages.
“Two people who had filed for divorce and lived in separate residences from their exes went to dinner,” Bush, 44, told Alex Cooper on the Wednesday, October 21, episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast when asked to clarify whether she had already filed for divorce from Grant Hughes when she was first linked to Harris, who was previously married to Ali Krieger.
Bush emphasized there was no overlap when she and Harris, 41, moved on with each other.
“Everybody wishes they could have done a million things differently at the time,” she continued. “Like, do I wish that instead of flying home and stopping in New York because I already had tickets to a comedy show and taking [Ashlyn] on a date that I’d taken her on a date six weeks later? Yeah, of course I do. But I can’t change it.”
Bush added: “What I can’t do is change my reality for anyone else. I also can’t be my own personal definition of insanity, which is to try the same thing over and over again with no result. I’m never going to change anybody’s mind who made it up.”
Elsewhere in the episode, Bush recalled her first introduction to Harris when they became mutuals on social media in 2015. They didn’t meet in person until four years later, and after years of friendship, Bush realized she had feelings for Harris.
“But I’m a little bit chickens***, so this whole, like, ‘Oh, they must have gotten drunk and had an affair,’” she noted. “Anyone who thinks that was a casual leap for me doesn’t know me.”
Bush, who was married to Hughes from 2022 to 2023, explained that she didn’t even know Harris was going through her own issues in her marriage to Krieger, with whom the former professional soccer player adopted two kids. (Harris and Krieger also split in 2023.)
“I wasn’t, like, in the inner circle knowing what was up,” she clarified. “I didn’t even know the inside information on how she’d gotten there until everyone finally had a place to talk.”
Bush could relate about feeling the need to “keep performing” for the public, saying, “You keep pretending it’s OK even when you’re not sleeping in the same bed or even when you’re living on separate floors of your house or even when your parents know you are not sleeping at all and miserable.”
Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris’ friendship turned romantic on the heels of their respective divorces from Grant Hughes and Ali Krieger — and they’ve been building their relationship ever since. A source exclusively told Us Weekly Bush and Harris “bonded over their breakups and having to start over” in October 2023, one month after they […]
Bush acknowledged that it was hard once questions arose about the timeline between her and Harris — who quietly tied the knot in 2025.
“There’s also a part of me that goes, ‘I’ve done too much work on myself to hurt someone when I’ve been hurt,’” she shared about the negativity online. “Especially when there’s children involved.”
Bush credited the dual WGA and SAG strikes in 2023 for being “really helpful” in drowning out the noise, adding, “Everything was quiet and it was really like, ‘Just let’s be quiet.’ There were moments where I was like, ‘Well, I wish I would have said this and I wish we would have done this.’ It was quiet for me. I don’t think I would have made it through that had I not known her for so long and had I not seen the work and the sadness and the heartbreak and the absolute crushing experience [of ending a marriage].”
She concluded: “When [these rumors] affect people’s jobs, when they destroy someone’s ability to provide for their family, when they destroy someone’s credibility unfairly — I don’t want to be party to that. And that’s a really hard practice ‘cause all I want to do is be like, ‘Here’s all the information. And if you had the information, the vibes would be different.’”