When I started watching Chicago PD last year, Erin Lindsay instantly became my favorite character and that’s not only because of her unique storyline and character but mostly due to the amazing lady playing her: Sophia Bush
As I started to get more into the show, I started to follow her social media accounts and soon enough I realised she was pretty different from other actors I follow. Her posts were less about herself or her job and more about political things. I learned that she wasn’t only an actress but also an activist who was working on many different projects. At that time she was also starting her own podcast called „work in progress“ inspired by one of her quotes. She works on almost 90 different charities like „I am a voter“ which is an organisation working to motivate people in the US to vote.
Before she started to work on Chicago PD she was working on the show „One tree hill“ that she was starring on for a whole of 9 years. A few years after the show ended, news broke that things on the small set in North Carolina hadn’t always been as happy and peaceful as they seemed. Apparently Sophia and some of her female coworkers went public about being sexually assaulted by a producer of the show that would approach the girls and send them inappropriate texts. Luckily he didn’t live near them, he lived in LA, but to the girls the times he was around were very uncomfortable.
After leaving Chicago PD in 2017, many people wondered what were her reasons she left the hit show since detective Lindsay was a common favorite to the audience. After a while she started to talk about it and told the news how she was very unhappy because of the atmosphere on set. She was abused regularly in front of everyone and none of her co stars stepped in. She also mentioned the bad conditions they had to work under like filming outside in freezing cold weather when half of the staff already had pneumonia . Since the cast was doing most of the stunts themselves it wasn’t a rare thing people got injured either. Sophia herself was admitted to the hospital because of a head injury and possible brain bleed after a stunt gone wrong. Months later she also discovered she had injured her hip after being in pain for a long time because she hadn’t gotten an MRI when admitted to the hospital since the doctors were focusing on the head injury. On a podcast she said that she felt ignored and her body was falling apart and the only way to get better was quitting her job. The problem was that stars on those kind of shows usually sign a 7-years-contract and so did Sophia. She had secretly been thinking about quitting during her second year already but only actually told people when starting her fourth year. Obviously they weren’t about to let her go. She gave them two choices: they either let her go or she’ll sue the network and write an article about the bad conditions on set for New York Times. Not wanting bad publicity, they agreed to let her go. Sophia had been scared to go through with quitting since lots of peoples jobs dependent on the show and she didn’t want to risk them losing their jobs but at some point she was so unhappy that she couldn’t take it anymore. She said she was usually an easy person to be around but towards the end of her time she was probably difficult to be around due to the pain she was in.
After quitting Chicago PD she took her time to heal. She traveled a lot and focused more on herself than on work and she also saw a therapist regularly which helped her a lot. She did work on some movies again in 2018 which she really enjoyed and after 15 years of working with those bad bosses she was happy to work in a friendly setting with good work climate again. She is currently working on a sequel to „Love, Simon“ for Disney+.
One topic she is speaking up about is „Period poverty“ which was something absolutely new to me. To people here it’s pretty much a standard that everyone has access to sanitary supplies and I was shocked to learn that in the US that’s not the case. Lots of girls can’t go to school when on they’re period due to lack of sanitary supplies. That’s something people here can hardly imagine. She works with companies and organisations to change that and I think it’s important to do that now because everyone should have the chance of getting a good education and shouldn’t be forced to miss school because of something like that.
Another topic she brings up often is the current American government, especially president Trump. She’s very much an opponent his politics and concerned about the future of her country. She often points out the lies he tells and the bad things he does as well as motivating people to vote in the next election so the government will hopefully change.
A quote she lives by is „be the change you want to see in the world“ and she is definitely living up to that. She has been honoured with different awards for her commitment in political and national issues and she’s far from being done.
ES Magazin 