Sophia Bush comes out as queer, announces relationship with US football star Ashlyn Harris

A year after filing for divorce from her husband Grant Hughes, Sophia Bush has come out as “queer.”

In an interview for Glamour magazine’s April cover, the One Tree Hill actress shared that her coming-out experience at age 41 felt like a “first birthday” all over again.

“I finally feel like I can breathe.” “I don’t think I can explain how profound that is,” she said while seated next to her girlfriend Ashlyn Harris.

“I feel like I was wearing a weighted vest for who knows how long. I hadn’t realised how heavy it was until I finally just put it down. This might sound crazy—but I think other people in trauma recovery will get it—I am taking deep breaths again. I can feel my legs and feet. I can feel my feet in my shoes right now. It makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time.”

Sohpia Bush had filed for divorce from her former husband Grant Hughes a year after the pair had gotten married in 2022.

Meanwhile her new partner, Ashlyn Harris, is known for her victories with the US women’s national soccer teams in 2015 and 2019. 

Harris had also filed for divorce from her ex-wife Ali Krieger in September.

Contrary to assumptions that Bush and the former soccer pro had an affair leading to the end of their marriages, Bush clarifies in her essay that neither of them cheated.

“The idea that I left my marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous—that, to be crystal-clear, never happened—rather than having taken over a year to do the most soul crushing work of my life? … It feels brutal,” Bush wrote.

She explains that she and Harris, who met in 2019, grew closer after their respective splits last year and supported each other through healing, initially as friends.

Then one day, Bush recalls, she asked Harris to go on a “non-friend-group-hang”and it turned out to be one of“the most surreal experiences” of her life.

While Bush says her former partners were aware of her interest in women, it took self-love and work for her to reach a point where she feels proud to acknowledge it openly and allow herself to be in a relationship with another woman.