Sophia Bush has been open about her time on One Tree Hill, from the good memories to the hard times, but now, she’s getting into the nitty-gritty: money. On the Nov. 12 episode of the “Networth and Chill With Your Rich BFF” podcast, the actor revealed how much she got paid for the classic 2003 drama, which was not nearly as much as fans may have thought.
When host Vivian Tu asked about her OTH salary, Bush warned, “I’m really gonna bum you out,” explaining that she was paid much less than most of her former castmates due to their differing levels of fame and acting experience coming into the series.
“You get hired, and especially as a young person, you don’t have a quote,” she said. “If you’ve not been a regular on something before, you have literally no quote. So when I started on that show, pretty much everyone was coming from something. Hilarie [Burton] had been a VJ, [Bethany] Joy [Lenz] had been on soap operas. I had been the philanthropy chair of my sorority at USC.”
How Much Did Sophia Earn For OTH?
Bush went on to explain that “the difference in pay scale was wild,” especially when factoring in what she owed her team. “Once I paid 10% to my managers, 10% to my agents, 5% to my lawyers, paid a publicist fee, paid my taxes, and then paid the $3,000 a month that my two-bedroom apartment in Wilmington cost me, I was taking home about $3,000 an episode,” she admitted.
While OTH was an immediate success, spanning nine seasons before concluding in 2012, Bush never got a chance to renegotiate her salary for the majority of the show’s run. “When you sign a TV contract, you sign a contract for six years,” she explained. “They can cancel your show at any time, but you can’t leave or ask for a raise because you’re on a six-year deal.”
For a while, Bush made peace with her contract because she expected to get paid more through residuals if One Tree Hill got syndicated on other TV networks, which indeed happened. However, streaming has now changed the game, and she says the cast no longer gets any money.
“What you really hope works for you in TV, even if you’re not making a lot of money at the time, is, well, [hopefully] we’ll get syndicated and we’ll get residuals. Except when we signed to do that wonderful show that we all loved, there was no streaming,” she said. “Our show is 1763169246 syndicated on streaming, which means the studio that owns the show makes all the residuals, and we don’t.”
Thankfully, this likely won’t happen again. Bush is working on a potential OTH reboot for Netflix alongside Burton and Danneel Ackles. If the sequel series is green-lit and she reprises her role of Brooke Davis, she has another chance to get paid what she’s worth this time.
