Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris have quite an unconventional love story. In addition to going through separate divorces when they first started dating, they’ve also had to deal with public speculation, coming out to the public, and so on.
Most recently, Bush opened up about how she made the first move with Harris – and it’s quite untraditional too. According to a new episode of her Work in Progress podcast, Bush first showed she was interested when her friends were brainstorming who to set up with Harris after her split from fellow retired soccer star Ali Krieger.
“Our friends were trying to set her up with someone, and I was, like, ‘If she’s ready to date, she’s going on a date with me.’ Like, sorry. Uh-uh,” Bush remembered, per People.
At the time, Bush wasn’t out as queer to her friends (or entirely to herself, for that matter). So, of course, her joke took friends by surprise. “People were, like, ‘Wait, what?'” Bush remembered.
Then, the One Tree Hill star got up the courage and asked Harris out. “She even said to me, ‘Hold the phone. I always thought you were straight?!'” Bush remembered. “And I was like, ‘I always thought you were happy. But, like, we’re both single. What are we doing?'”
Since coming out, however, Bush said many people have reached out and explained how not surprised they were.
“Even a lot of the queer women in my life were, like, ‘Oh, we knew you were, like, an ally and we maybe wondered when we saw this TV show or this movie you’ve done or whatever: ‘that doesn’t really look like acting.’ But, like, we didn’t really know,’ ” Bush said. “And I was like, ‘Wow, we all do it. Like, even in our friend groups, we make assumptions.'”
In April, Bush first opened up about her and Harris’ romance. “I didn’t expect to find love in this support system,” Bush, who came out a queer in the essay, admitted. “I don’t know how else to say it other than: I didn’t see it until I saw it. And I think it’s very easy not to see something that’s been in front of your face for a long time when you’d never looked at it as an option and you had never been looked at as an option.”
She also gushed about their first date. “That meal was four and a half hours long and truly one of the most surreal experiences of my life thus far,” Bush wrote. So romantic!
Before you go, click here to see our favorite lesbian couples in Hollywood.
