Sophia Bush reunites with One Tree Hill co-star Hilarie Burton on the red carpet at the third season premiere of the Netflix show GIRLS5EVA

Sophia Bush reunited with her One Tree Hill co-star Hilarie Burton on Thursday night – almost 12 years after the CW show went off the air.

They hit the red carpet together at the premiere of Netflix’s GIRLS5EVA, which debuts its third season on March 14 in New York City.

Bush, 41, and Burton, 41, played on-screen 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 shocking exit in 2009 ahead of the show’s seventh season, alongside co-star Chad Michael Murray.

Despite it being fifteen years since their last on-screen appearance, Bush and Burton have maintained a close friendship.

And their bond was on full display at Thursday’s big red carpet event.

Bush sizzled in a fitted black leather jacket, styled with matching trousers and heels.

The actress wore minimal makeup and she let her long brunette hair down all night long.

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 locks were swept to the side.

She carried a striking Coach bag containing Richard Bernstein’s stunning 1969 portrait of a young Barbra Streisand.

Although she teased a potential guest star role on One Tree Hill prior to her departure, 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 on the last episode of the show, everyone in my world told me, “You can’t leave.” You can’t leave,” Burton told Moira, who was that week’s guest.

“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 joking, and you said, ‘What’s going on?'” Burton added.

Burton told her she didn’t know what to do, and Kelly’s response was, “Run,” which Burton said she “started as a joke.”

‘I was like, “Yes?” You said to me, ‘There are 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 “who gave me permission to go” from the show, which she left after the sixth season.

“I really appreciated your opinion of me and our company and the way you put your family before your job, and that’s what I wanted – what you had is what I wanted,” Burton said.

“You didn’t have to say anything because you were living it and we could just see it…I honestly wanted to thank you for that since I was 26 years old,” Burton said.

One Tree Hill premiered in 2003 on The CW, formerly The WB, and follows the lives of Lucas (played by Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan Scott (played by James Lafferty), two high school-age half-brothers living in fictional North Carolina. live. village.

Burton, Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz played the drama’s three main girls: Peyton Sawyer, Brooke Davis and Haley James Scott.

While it appears on Podcast by Kelly Ripa in December, Burton opened up about not being the “pretty” one in the cast and how that “toxicity” affected her.

“I think this is part of the toxicity of the early 2000s, when I was working on a show with some 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 freed me from the burden of having to try to live up to that, and so I always had to be the snarky one. I have to be the funny one.

“I have to be all those other labels that don’t require as much maintenance.”

Despite the ‘toxicity’, Burton and Bush have a close friendship that seems to have only grown stronger over the years.

Last year, Burton publicly defended Bush after her ex-girlfriend Erin Foster accused her of having an affair with Chad Michael Murray.

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, writing, “Ooof. Shrink. I got off my red-eye flight home and several people had sent me this headline.”

She added, “Like the person who was sitting in the front row at the time? This wasn’t it. We were all told that you were broken up and therefore our husband was too [pursuing] her. This is now being made up to make my sister look like a brazen whore.”

Fiercely defending her close friend, she added, “And if she’s anyone’s whore, it’s mine!”

Burton went straight to the source of the drama when she tagged Foster in her post.

“Happy to discuss @erinfoster,” she wrote, adding, “You deserve the truth too.”

The note continued, “There are so many unnamed sources making claims about the woman I love, so fuck it. I will be a cited source. Lotta internet voices are nasty, and as the person who knows the real timeline? It would be laughable if that were the case [weren’t] so painful.’