Sophia Bush has explained why she relished living in North Carolina.
Sophia Bush found living in North Carolina to be an enlightening experience.
The 44-year-old actress was born and raised in California – but Sophia lived in North Carolina while she was shooting One Tree Hill, the hit TV drama series, and she admits that it changed her outlook on life.
Sophia – who has balanced her acting career with activism campaigns – told Bustle: “It was very strange to move somewhere and be walking down a sidewalk downtown next to my neighbours of colour and have to pass Confederate statues.
“Interestingly enough, moving there enabled me to begin on the journey of having conversations about disparity in real time, not talking about what happened historically, but about: what were the patterns of our history that still exist today?”
Sophia explained that she feels a strong connection to the American south, having lived in North Carolina and now being married to Ashlyn Harris, the Floridian soccer player.
She explained: “I spent ten years in North Carolina. I’ve lived in Texas, and I’m madly in love with a woman from Florida.
“The south is so culturally rich and has also been so historically under-resourced and taken from.
“In all of my travels everywhere, some of my favourite fellow organisers, some of the most hilarious radical minds I know, come from my southern friends that are like, ‘It’s f*** this s*** o’clock, and we’re going to fix America.’ And, I’m like, ‘OK!’”
Sophia has just released her memoir, And I Will Tell You Mine: Notes from a Life in Progress, and she found writing it to be a fascinating experience.
The actress explained that she was forced to confront various incidents and issues that were pushed to the back of her mind for so many years.
The TV star told People: “As an adult, you look back, and you go, ‘Interesting, I really just chose to keep looking forward, and maybe I needed to look back. Maybe I wouldn’t have repeated some patterns so many times had I had them illuminated for myself.
“It was pretty weird to start seeing it at 41, to really lay it out and go, ‘Oh, wow. What you don’t heal, you repeat.”
Sophia Bush loved living in North Carolina, but why?
