Sophia Bush and Chris Carmack Discuss Their Iconic Teen Drama Past

Sophia Bush and Chris Carmack have a lot in common.

The twosome both skyrocketed to success in early 2000s teen dramas and, in 2024, became costars on ABC’s long-running Grey’s Anatomy. Now they’re pivoting to an entirely new genre in the psychological thriller The Stranger in My Home. The film follows Bush’s Ali as she meets Carmack’s Tom, a mysterious man who claims their respective daughters, Katie (Amiah Miller) and Liv (Grace Aiello Antczak), were switched at birth. What begins as an unsettling encounter soon spirals into a nightmare of long-buried secrets, lies and obsession.

“You look like Superman!” exclaims Bush, 42, who is still in disbelief over seeing her old pal Carmack, 44, stray from good guy roles to portray a grieving father with an edge of darkness. Bush is just as removed from her typical “badass” characters as Ali, a mother who will do anything to protect her child. “It was nice for me to not have to be a hero in the most obvious sense of the word,” she tells Carmack in Us Weekly’s latest In Conversation.

Stranger in My Home is available On Demand now. Below, the pair discuss their shared teen drama past, potential rom-com future and more:

Sophia Bush and Chris Carmack Trade 2000s Dramas for New Thriller: Watch

Chris Carmack: I’ll begin! Sophia, people are fascinated by these stories of being swapped at birth. Why do you think that is?

Sophia Bush: The idea that babies could be swapped at birth sounds like an old wives’ tale or an urban legend. And then as we get a script, we do research. We found out about the times that this has happened before there were these supposedly fail-safe measures instituted in hospitals. To know this has happened to people, it spins you out mentally. [Thinking about] being able to get in character, I thought, “Well, it wouldn’t matter, right? They’ve raised this kid, this is their baby.” And yes, their biological child is out there somewhere, and the spin cycle that that would put you on mentally and emotionally. It’s absolutely valid that I love my child and nothing will ever change this. It doesn’t matter if they’re biologically mine or not. But also, how do I make space in my life for this other person? What do they mean to me? What will I mean to them? What’s going to happen to us? Will our family be the same? It sort of begins this cascade of questions that can just shift everything you know to be reality. I thought that would be really fascinating for us to dig into. I mean, what a juicy thing to do as an actor. What about you?

CC: It’s sort of a gut punch to the idea of identity. Identity is such a personal question for everybody. And to have that viscerally ripped away from you, now [the daughters who have been switched] have to explore, “What is now my identity? Who am I? I felt like I was like my mother.” Or, “I’ve had a conflict with my mother, is it because I’m not their seed, so to speak?” As a parent, I can’t think of anything that might be so absolutely gut-wrenching, to think this person that I know and love is someone else’s biological child that they didn’t know about. You know, this is not an adoption. What are they gonna want to do? Are they gonna wanna go meet these parents? Are they gonna love these parents more than they love me? All these questions are asked. And you’re right, juicy is the right word.

Chris Carmack, Sophia Bush Republic Pictures (a Paramount Pictures label)

SB: And I think especially because the script centers on this happening when the girls are 15, teenage angst is a real thing. As the both of us know from our early careers, I think there’s such a fear as a parent, if you are in that very traditional timeline of conflict with your teenager, will they, in their rebellion, say, “I wanna be with these other people? I wanna live with these other people?” Are they going to desire an agency that could forever shift your life? It’s the sort of scenario that just causes this kind of unending stream of questions.

CC: And they’re exploring their identities so much at that age. I mean, we have the whole social media thing with Amiah’s character. [She has this] scary fake social account. These teenagers are trying to become something and they don’t know what it is. They always say kids need structure to rebel against. Well, that structure’s just ripped away from them. Everything has been ripped away, and it’s very scary where that could lead these kids.

SB: Absolutely. I love that in this moment all [the readers] are getting, like, a real inside peek at the way scene partners work! This is kind of what we did, you know? Sit and bring all of these questions we’d been thinking about into our rehearsal room and our table reads and our cast dinners and mornings over coffee on set. This is really the fun part about our jobs.

CC: That’s true!

SB: Speaking of what we do at work, how did you start to prepare once you first read the script and said, “Oh, I wanna do this?” What was your next order of business to get into character?

Amiah Miller, Chris Carmack Republic Pictures (a Paramount Pictures label)

CC: My next order of business is to relate to Tom. I’m thinking about, “What do I know about Tom and how can I bring something of myself into Tom?” And my hook in was family, love of family. I’ve got two daughters [Kai, 5, and Cielle, 3, with my wife, Erin Slaver]. I would fight for them, I would die for them. I think there’s a lot of that in Tom. And we find out that he’s kind of been devastated and lost a bit of his family and here’s an opportunity to reclaim a new family. Maybe he doesn’t do it in the best way, but it’s out of love and need and fear and grief and obsession. Where did you start with Ali?

SB: Similarly to you, I think [it’s about] figuring out what I understand about someone, even if they’re doing something that you could call wrong. How do you understand that motivation? For me, I had to really unpack who Ali is. I had to unpack what her journey has been. I had to, as myself, even look at some of the things that this character criticizes about herself. I hated some of that for her. And then what I always make sure I do is come to terms with what I relate to a character on and what I don’t, and ensure that I can deconstruct any favoritism on this end of the spectrum and any judgment on that end of the spectrum. And really just figure out how to put a nuanced, complicated human being together. Then something that was really impactful for me was understanding this question of identity and family. My partner [Ashlyn Harris’] kids are adopted. My best friend’s son is my godson. Obviously, I did not give birth to him, but I would literally give up my life for that kid. I have two friends who have a gorgeous family, and both of their children were adopted through the foster care system. I watched them fight for years for those children. I got to ask them about what it felt like to have raised them from the time they were little babies and spend years not knowing if their children would stay, what that limbo felt like, what that journey was like, how they held onto their humanity, how they didn’t just die from the anxiety and the fear. And it was so gorgeous to have people share all of these journeys and these experiences. Because imagine being trapped in that limbo that I know my friends were in! All of it became really beautiful to understand, that yes, biology is something, and also family is what you make it. It colored the story for me in a really cool way.

CC: I’ve got a question. This film obviously is full of all kinds of twists, turns and surprises. When you saw it in its final entity, was there anything that surprised you?

Amiah Miller, Sophia Bush Republic Pictures (a Paramount Pictures label)

SB: Honestly, I remember the first time I read the script thinking I knew where it was going and then it kept twisting. And what felt really exciting to me when we all got to sit down and watch it together was that even though I knew what was coming, I was still stressed. I was still nervous. I found myself laughing in moments that I didn’t know would be funny. I found myself gasping at things that obviously I knew were coming. We filmed those scenes and I was still startled. And those kinds of things make me feel really excited. We literally made the movie and then I still get to be surprised by the movie. It’s taken on its own life. What surprised you?

CC: One hundred percent agreed. Because when you’re making the movie, you know your character, you know the journey, you know all the things that the audience doesn’t and shouldn’t at the time. So when I got to watch it almost a year after having filmed it, Tom was not quite as close to the surface and I was so excited about how it keeps everybody on their toes and we don’t know what’s gonna happen. And like you said, I was really happy to see the laughs in places I wasn’t expecting, because that’s an element of enjoyment of a film. We wanted to bring it in, but you just don’t know until you see it. And I think it really played.

SB: I do too. I know you talked about how you’ve got to relate to your character no matter what. That’s obviously our job, but you’ve been working on Grey’s for so long now, and you play this wonderfully heroic doctor [Atticus Lincoln]. You put people back together, you’re Chris Carmack! I mean, you look like Superman! You’re a good dude. Was it a breath of fresh air for you to get to lean into somebody who’s got some darkness and some twisted history? Did it make you feel a little excited?

CC: Oh, absolutely. When I got the script and realized I was gonna be on a plane soon to go play Tom, it was like strapping myself into a roller-coaster. I was excited about the ride. And I think through the course of filming this movie, it took me on that ride. It was fresh wind in my face, and I didn’t know what was coming around every turn. It was like a shot of oxygen. It was exciting. What about you?

Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton Morgan, One Tree Hill Warner Bros. / Courtesy: Everett Collection

SB: What I think I really enjoyed [was] the amount of vulnerability in this character. It’s a very vulnerable experience to embody. I loved getting to be so afraid because the last time that I was doing stunt sequences like this, I was doing them every week on a cop show [Chicago P.D.], but I was playing a cop. I was like, strapped with a gun and absolutely the person who runs toward the problem, which is also kind of similar to me. I mean, I’m not out there carrying, but I am a weapons person. I am a person who runs towards something if something happens. And in the weirdest way watching the movie, I was like, “Oh man, I love getting to play a woman that’s allowed to be scared.” She’s not a badass. She doesn’t know how to fight. She absolutely is flailing and afraid and runs and falls, and then still gets back up and figures it out. And it was really nice for me to not have to be a hero in the most obvious sense of the word. I so appreciate when someone is afraid and does it anyway.

CC: Yeah, it was the emotional and psychological need to protect your family that kept you charging into the fire. So this movie plays a little with genre. How would you describe it?

SB: I think this is what excited me so much about the script. I thought I was reading a sort of heightened family drama. When it first opens, it’s a little surreal. It gave me, like, Big Little Lies or Sirens energy, a little escapist, sexy. And then before I knew it, it was a psychological thriller. And by the end I was so anxious trying to finish the script. because I didn’t know if it was gonna tilt into a full horror film or not.

CC: I love it too because there are aspects of horror that I love, the surprises, the jumps, the camp at times.

SB: I was just gonna say the camp!

Chris Carmack, Mischa Barton, The O.C. WB / Courtesy: Everett Collection

CC: The camp makes you laugh and gives you a little bit of relief. But I cannot do, like, the slash in the arteries. It makes me queasy. So to be a part of something that edged on horror-light, I was very happy.

SB: Wait a second. You just said gore makes you queasy and you play a surgeon on TV!

CC: Well, yeah. [laugh] But I’m actually fascinated with medical! Also, we are on a network show. It’s very different from the gore you would see in a movie. There’s sputtering, but they keep it PG-13.

SB: Usually by the time you get into an OR, things are pretty cleaned up.

CC: Yeah. And I’m just the bone guy, man. I hammer. I just take my drill and hammer. Was it fun to revisit the world of cheerleading?

SB: You know what’s so funny? I didn’t really think about it! In the film, the sequence is amazing. We have these aerial flyers and we literally had the national championship collegiate cheer team on our set. So the day we shot all that stuff, they were working those routines and we were doing all the stunt stuff. It was, like, a 12-hour day for them. And I was off camera for most of it and watching a lot of it. But really, the coach ran all of that. And then I think I worked for 90 minutes when the camera turned around on me across two scenes. I didn’t really think about it in this massive way. But it’s been such a thing for all the One Tree Hill fans because Brooke Davis was the captain of the cheer squad. But we never tumbled, I never did an aerial or anything. We had no professional people on our show. They barely let us rehearse ever. They didn’t really give us a lot of time. So it felt so different to me, but I know it’s been really fun for the fans.

CC: It’s an exciting sequence. And I know a lot of One Tree Hill fans are gonna watch this movie and they’re gonna enjoy that.

SB: Totally. And it’s kind of a trip because Amiah Miller, who plays my daughter, looks so much like Hilarie Burton [Morgan]. Like if instead of being a punk rock kid, Peyton Sawyer had been a Taylor Swift fan. That could be Amiah in her little cheerleading outfit. So everyone is like, “Why does her daughter look like baby Peyton?” I do love that.

Camilla Luddington, Chris Carmack, Grey’s Anatomy ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

CC: Yeah!

SB: Speaking of the fandom that’s excited about this crossover, because one of the things that I loved the most about working on OTH and that I know the fans loved was my character’s arc. Brooke really got to start as one thing and then evolve into something that I loved that felt different. You got to do something really similar playing Luke on The O.C. Do you think we both just got lucky with story line? What was the journey for you carrying him through his arc?

CC: I think I got cast as Luke because I looked a certain way. I was on Abercrombie bags and underwear modeling and they even put a joke in the script about like, “Hey, Abercrombie,” so I was very sort of stereotypically this guy that they wanted to look like Luke. But our first season I think was, like, 25 episodes. [Editor’s note: It was 30!] It’s a lot of episodes, and we spent a lot of time together on set with the writers and producers. I think they got to know me as a person more and they started to layer a little bit more of the goofy, funny Luke and they enjoyed bringing him in this direction of a jock who had been putting up this front. When he became able to be himself around his new friends and the people who had been the outcasts, he suddenly was able to be his goofy self. That was a really fun way to take the character.

SB: I think it was a similar journey for me. As the writers got to know me, my character, she just grew. I think they realized that I was a really sensitive soul who might be able to show up in any room but would probably be really nervous on the inside and who shows up for friends no matter what. And there were certainly these bold and courageous, crazy amazing things that she did that I don’t know that I would’ve been able to. We always joke that every character on OTH had the most insane adult job. I became a fashion designer. [Nathan, played by James Lafferty], played in the NBA, like, it was insane. But I think there were certain things about the integrity and feistiness and passion that they certainly started to layer in there for me. It just made me feel like I could bring a little more of myself to her.

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CC: I think that happens over time. When you’re working on a series that lasts a long time, the writers get to know you and they start putting more of you. And when you’ve been on a show, like me on Grey’s for seven years now, I’ve seen a lot of myself on screen.

SB: I was gonna ask that. I love that. That’s so fun. [Fans are also] geeked that we’re in this movie together because I came and worked with you on Grey’s all last year. But what’s the thing they don’t know about the order of these jobs?

CC: Everybody seems to think that Grey’s happened first. But we filmed [Stranger in My Home] this last summer and then had the pleasure of working together on Grey’s afterwards. So Grey’s Anatomy was our reunion.

SB: It was, and even though we haven’t shared any scenes on the set of Grey’s, we’ve had a few days where, based on scheduling and locations, we do overlap coming and going from work. And so the first day we finally got to see each other in the Seattle Grace set, we sent a lot of photos of us in our scrubs to [our director] Jeff [Fisher] and the whole Stranger in My Home family. Everyone was like, “What is going on?!” But that was a sweet treat. We’re in a very good year together, you and I, my friend.

CC: Let’s keep the streak going.

SB: I know. What’s our third time’s the charm job gonna be? We’ve done drama, we’ve done thriller. Do we need to go do a rom-com?

CC: I like that plan.