Starring on a TV drama is hard enough, but Sophia Bush had to do so while putting some IRL personal drama aside.

We’re of course talking about how the actress had to keep working with One Tree Hill co-star Chad Michael Murray after their marriage was over. As fans know, the pair played couple Brooke Davis and Lucas Scott on the hit series and started dating off screen in 2003.

After getting together during the show’s first season, the twosome’s characters spent most of season 2 apart, before Lucas confessed his feelings for Brooke in the May 2005 finale — which aired one month after Bush and Murray got hitched. Sadly, the romance didn’t work out for Sofia and CMM off-screen: they announced their separation just five months after getting married. However, their characters ended up getting back together during season 3, meaning the exes had to keep pretending to be romantic opposites.

Related: Sophia Is Married! All The A-List Wedding Details HERE!

The drama was dissected during a recent episode of Bush, Hilarie Burton, and Bethany Joy Lenz’s Drama Queens podcast, on which they covered s3e9, How a Resurrection Really Feels, which aired in December 2005.

Lenz gushed over Bush for her professionalism at the time, telling her co-hosts:

“Not for nothing, you were going through a breakup with the person that you were playing a romance opposite of. And regardless of what all those circumstances were, that’s incredibly difficult — emotionally to be able to be vulnerable and be there in that moment… There’s lots of actors who have done that — who’ve done movies and TV shows and things, they date their costar or whatever, it doesn’t work out. But the fact that you were able to just be that raw and open and vulnerable, it’s a real credit to you as an artist. You put your art in front of everybody and just were like, ‘Look, this is it. I’m just sharing my heart and here we are.’ I thought it was really beautiful.”

For Sophia, putting her work — and her character — first is what helped her get through the difficult period. She told the others:

“People can call it whatever they want. They can say it’s strength, they can say it’s pride, they can say its professionalism — you can put a positive or a negative skew on it. But I was always going to put Brooke Davis ahead of everybody and everything else. Nothing mattered to me but being honest for her.”

The Chicago P.D. star went on to muse why so many fans were team Brucas, sharing:

“As teenagers, they got to be silly and our show needed a little bit of, like, silliness and discovery. It couldn’t all be, like, marriage and death.”

Fortunately for the actors, Brooke and Lucas broke up again before season 3 ended; however, the pair stayed on One Tree Hill together for three more seasons.

Could YOU ever work with an ex like this, Perezcious readers?

[Image via Judy Eddy/MEGA/WENN]