Sophia Bush hits back at claims she and Ashlyn Harris cheated on their spouses… and reveals how their unlikely romance began
Sophia Bush has firmly denied the persistent claims that her romance with her wife Ashlyn Harris began as an extramarital affair.
Bush has previously said they started dating in October 2023, the month after Harris announced her split from her previous wife and fellow ex-soccer player Ali Krieger.
Meanwhile, in August 2023, Bush herself filed for divorce from her second husband Grant Hughes after a marriage that had lasted merely 13 months.
Given the tight timeline, Harris, 41, and Bush, 44, have been trailed ever since by allegations that they cheated on their former spouses with each other.
Now Bush has shot down the speculation, describing her first date with Harris by saying: ‘Two people who had filed for divorce and lived in separate residences from their exes went to dinner,’ in an interview on Call Her Daddy.
However the One Tree Hill actress did confess to harboring regrets about the way she and Harris were first spotted out together, telling host Alex Cooper: ‘Everybody wishes they could have done a million things differently at the time.’
Sophia Bush has firmly denied the persistent claims that her romance with her wife Ashlyn Harris began as an extramarital affair; the couple are pictured in September
She elaborated: ‘Do I wish that instead of flying home and stopping in New York ’cause I already had tickets to a comedy show and taking her on a date, I’d taken her on a date six weeks later? Yeah, of course I do. But I can’t change it.’
Bush remarked that she was unable to ‘change my reality for anyone else’ or ‘be my own personal definition of insanity, which is try the same thing over and over again with no result. I’m never going to change anybody’s mind who made it up.’
The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for Bush, Harris, Hughes and Krieger for comment.
Harris and Krieger exchanged vows in 2019 and welcomed two children – daughter Sloane, five, and son Ocean, four – over the course of their relationship.
Last month, Bush revealed in her bombshell new memoir that she and Harris secretly got married over the summer of 2025 in upstate New York.
Explaining her decision to keep their legal status under wraps for so long, Bush observed: ‘When you get to this stage in your life, you begin to unpack what’s yours and what’s always sort of been for everyone else.’
However she ultimately decided to disclose the marriage to her fans after becoming exasperated with having to refer to Harris as her ‘partner,’ she said.
‘You’re not my partner, you know? You’re my wife,’ Bush told Harris during an interview for Vogue. ‘And it feels so amazing to say that.’
In her new conversation with Cooper, Bush revealed she proposed to Harris, sharing: ‘Turns out I was never supposed to be asked. I was supposed to ask.’
Meanwhile, in August 2023, Bush filed for divorce from her second husband Grant Hughes after a marriage that had lasted merely 13 months; pictured that March
Harris and Krieger exchanged vows in 2019 and welcomed two children – daughter Sloane, five, and son Ocean, four – over the course of their relationship
Lifting the curtain back on their intimate nuptials, she divulged: ‘We got married in the backyard, had dinner, and it was the best, most perfect day.’
Bush has said she and Harris first became acquainted in 2019, but always maintained they did not become a couple until after their respective marriages fell apart.
Nevertheless, when romance rumors started swirling about her and Harris, Bush found herself being accused of being a ‘homewrecker.’
At the time, Bush assiduously denied she broke up Harris’ marriage, writing that she had landed on the business end of ‘blatant lies and violent threats,’ via Glamour.
‘People looking in from the outside weren’t privy to just how much time it took, how many painful conversations were had,’ she added. ‘A lot of effort was made to be graceful with other people’s processing, their time and obligations, and their feelings.’
Meanwhile, Harris has also shared her method of weathering the publicity storm that raged around the start of her romance with Bush.
‘When all of this news was going crazy, it was really important for me to be intentional that I was a good human during a really hard season that became very public,’ said Harris, who played for America at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2015 and 2019.
‘I never wanted to speak ill about the mother of my children in front of them, with other friends. It was really important to me,’ she noted.
From 2005 to 2006, Bush was married to her One Tree Hill co-star Chad Michael Murray, whom she is pictured with at the premiere of his 2005 horror picture House of Wax
Bush and Harris made their red carpet debut in April 2024 at the star-studded White House Correspondents Dinner hosted by Colin Jost.
Shortly beforehand, Bush had announced their relationship by penning a magazine essay in which she announced that she was ‘queer.’
In her coming out essay, Bush – who was previously married to her One Tree Hill co-star Chad Michael Murray – revealed that multiple men she was involved with in the past were aware that she was also attracted to women.
She took aim at social media users ‘who said I’d left my ex because I suddenly realized I wanted to be with women – my partners have known what I’m into for as long as I have (so that’s not it, y’all, sorry!).’
Along with her husbands and Harris, Bush has also previously dated her co-stars Jon Foster, James Lafferty, Austin Nichols and Jesse Lee Soffer.