Sophia Bush reunited with her One Tree Hill co-star Hilarie Burton on Thursday night – nearly 12 years after the CW show went off the air.
They hit the red carpet together at the premiere of Netflix’s GIRLS5EVA, which will debut its third season on March 14, in New York City.
Bush, 41, and Burton, 41, played onscreen BFFs Brooke Davis and Peyton Sawyer, respectively, in the teen drama that ran for nine seasons from 2003 to 2012.
Bush appeared in all nine seasons while Burton made a shock exit in 2009 ahead of the show’s seventh season along with co-star Chad Michael Murray.
Despite it being 15 years since they last shared the screen, Bush and Burton have maintained a tight friendship.
Sophia Bush reunited with her One Tree Hill co-star Hilarie Burton on Thursday night – nearly 12 years after the CW show went off the air
Bush, 41, and Burton, 41, played onscreen BFFs Brooke Davis and Peyton Sawyer, respectively, in the teen drama that ran for nine seasons from 2003 to 2012
And their bond was on full display during Thursday’s big red carpet event.
Bush sizzled in a fitted black leather jacket styled with matching pants and heels.
The actress sported minimal makeup and she left her long brunette hair down for the night.
Meanwhile, Burton looked radiant in a silky green dress worn under a black blazer with shiny gold buttons.
The Solstice star rocked black boots with gold hardware and her voluminous tresses were swept to one side.
She carried an eye-catching Coach bag that featured Richard Bernstein’s stunning 1969 portrait of a young Barbra Streisand.
Although she teased a potential guest role on One Tree Hill ahead of her exit, Burton never returned to the TV show.
On her Drama Queens podcast in 2021, she revealed that it was her One Tree Hill co-star Moira Kelly who encouraged her to leave the show while everyone else begged her to stay.
‘Moira, this is the first time I’ve seen you since I left the show. I’ve wanted to tell you this for years and years and years, but in the last episode of the show, everyone in my world was telling me, ‘You can’t leave. You can’t leave,” Burton told Moira, who was that week’s guest.
They hit the red carpet together at the premiere of Netflix’s GIRLS5EVA, which will debut its third season on March 14
Despite it being 15 years since they last shared the screen, Bush and Burton have maintained a tight friendship
And their bond was on full display during Thursday’s big red carpet event
The real-life BFFs were dressed to the nines
‘I didn’t direct because I didn’t want to be on set all day because it was so bad. You came and you sat next to me and you started off by just joking, and you were like, ‘What’s going on?” Burton added.
Burton told her that she didn’t know what to do, and Kelly’s response was, ‘Run,’ which Burton said she, ‘started it off like a joke.’
‘I was like, “Yeah?” You said to me, “There’s so many chapters in life and this is just one. This is just one,”‘ Burton reminisced.
She added that Kelly was the only member of the cast and crew, ‘that gave me permission to go’ from the show, which she left after the sixth season.
‘I so valued your opinion of me and of our business and the way you prioritized your family over work, and that’s what I wanted—what you had is what I wanted,’ Burton said.
‘You didn’t have to say anything because you lived it and we could just, like, see it…I have wanted to thank you for that, honestly, since I was 26 years old,’ Burton said.
One Tree Hill premiered on The CW, formerly The WB, in 2003 and it follows the lives of Lucas (played by Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan Scott (played James Lafferty), two high school aged half-brothers living in a fictional North Carolina town.
Burton, Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz played the drama series’ three main girls: Peyton Sawyer, Brooke Davis and Haley James Scott.
Bush sizzled in a fitted black leather jacket styled with matching pants and heels
The actress sported minimal makeup and she left her long brunette hair down for the night
Meanwhile, Burton looked radiant in a silky green dress worn under a black blazer with shiny gold buttons
While appearing on Kelly Ripa’s podcast in December, Burton spoke about not being the ‘pretty one’ in the cast and how that ‘toxicity’ affected her.
‘I think part of the toxicity of the early 2000s where I worked on a show where there were a number of girls and it was very clear that I wasn’t the pretty one. That was just the marching order,’ she told Ripa.
‘Sophia Bush was the pretty one, and she is, but it relieved me of the weight of having to try to live up to that, and so I always got to be the snarky one. I got to be the funny one.
‘I got to be all these other labels that don’t require as much maintenance.’
Despite the ‘toxicity,’ Burton and Bush have a tight friendship that’s seemed to have only gotten stronger with age.
Last year, Burton publicly defended Bush after she was accused of having an affair with Chad Michael Murray by his ex-girlfriend Erin Foster.
Foster claimed that Murray cheated on her with Bush while they were still dating.
Using the app’s Stories feature, she posted a news article about Foster’s accusation and wrote, ‘Ooof. Cringe. I got off my red eye flight home and multiple people had sent me this headline.’
Bush (third from left) appeared in all nine seasons while Burton (third from right) made a shock exit in 2009 ahead of the show’s seventh season along with leading man Chad Michael Murray (center)
She added, ‘As the person who had a front row seat then? This wasn’t it. We were all told you’d broken up which is why our guy was [pursuing] her. Now this is being spun to make my sister look like a brazen harlot.’
Fiercely defending her close friend, she added, ‘And if she’s anyone’s harlot, it’s mine!’
Burton went right to the source of the drama as she tagged Foster in her post.
‘Happy to discuss @erinfoster,’ she wrote, adding, ‘You also deserve the truth.’
The note went on to say, ‘There are so many unnamed sources making claims about the woman I love, so f**k it. I’ll be a named source. Lotta internet voices being nasty, and as the person who knows the real timeline? It would be laughable if it [weren’t] so hurtful.’
