Sophia Bush will never forget this scary and gross incident with a fan.
During an appearance on the Podcrushed podcast on Wednesday, the 40-year-old actress looked back at one of the worst encounters she’s ever had with a fan during her career. She recalled going out with her friends at a bar on St. Patrick’s Day to grab a beer one day when a random man sat down next to them and tried to take a picture. And in the process of taking it, Sophia said he nearly hit her in the face with the phone. OMG?!
Immediately, she asked him to stop and leave her alone. But instead of respecting her request, he returned to his seat and continued videotaping her from his table. After half an hour of him recording her, Sophia told host Penn Badgley that she went over and confronted him:
“Like, I’m not a zoo animal. I see you, I hear you, is my thought process. And he keeps going and he is getting rowdy. And I can hear him swearing. I finally go over and I say, ‘Hi, I’m a person. I’d like to shake your hand. My name is Sophia. You’re making me really uncomfortable, man. I’ve asked you to stop. I’m a girl in a bar. You are a man I do not know. I don’t wanna be videoed on your phone. And my friends don’t either. Can you please stop?’”
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However, that did not happen. The One Tree Hill alum remembered the man became very angry at her for coming up to him:
“And he was like, ‘I don’t have to stop. You’re in public.’ And I said, ‘Okay, but is there no world in which you can understand that you are making me feel, you’re making me feel like a piece of meat, like I’m not human?’ And he goes, ‘I watch your show, so I pay your f**king salary. You are a piece of meat to me.’ And I just went, ‘What?’”
There is a way to approach a celebrity as a fan without treating them like an object or commodity, and this man went about it in a completely disrespectful and disgusting way. Who says something like that?! She is also allowed to enjoy her time out without having someone shoving a phone directly into her face (especially when she already asked him to stop) or making her feel very uncomfortable.
Sophia said a woman at his table then stepped in and tried to end the confrontation. But the guy continued to take things way too far:
“A girl at his table went, ‘Okay, okay enough. You really have to stop.’ And I said, ‘Do you understand the way you’re talking to me?’ And he goes, ‘You’re just a TV prostitute.’”
What the actual f**k. When things escalated into a physical altercation, Sophia ended up going home. So, so awful. With this experience in mind, the John Tucker Must Die star later noted that she doesn’t care if people perceive her as being “nice,” and she would rather they think she’s just “real,” explaining:
“I just don’t know what we’re doing here if we’re not figuring out how to be here together in a better way. So I’d much rather people say, ‘god, she has a lot to say,’ or ‘she is a pain in the ass,’ than she seems nice. I don’t wanna be nice. I wanna be here with you, with us, for real, because we don’t get to be here for that long in the grand scheme of things.”
What a terrible situation Sophia had to deal with. A note for fans everywhere: Do not do this or say things like this to a person — no matter who they are! Reactions, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments below.
[Image via Podcrushed/YouTube]