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Tackling Her Second Horror Movie: Bush wasn’t hesitant about doing another horror film. “No, because Stay Alive is a horror movie and was very much based in that sort of license of movie magic realm. A horror film with, I don’t want to say sci-fi, but definitely an out of reality context to it. This movie, granted it is a remake of a horror, but we’re really approaching it from the angle of a thriller. Horror fans are going to be happy. The scares are big and the blood they’re going to get is great.

Sophia Bush on the Physical Demands of The Hitcher: “It’s great for me. It’s my dream to sit and get to blow up cars and shoot people and make an action movie. Being on set with helicopters and car chases and stunts every day is amazing. That’s the tomboy side of me, the action junkie, the adrenaline junkie that wants to do all of those things. It’s been great because our stunt team is so great, so amazing. They’ve given me the opportunity to do everything that liability-wise I can’t. They didn’t let me jump through the 10 foot wall of fire. I asked to. I was like, ‘Put the burn cream on.’ And they’re all kind of like, ‘No, no, no. You don’t get it.’ But they did allow me to be in the car when it was on fire and kick the doors off and flames were coming in. That’s a pretty big rush, and it’s a lot of license that you’re not normally given on a set. It’s been really great for me to get to do all those things. It’s what I like to do.”

Loading Up on Dirt and Blood: Bush said it took a while to get all the dirt and blood and other assorted grime in place every day. “Our makeup time has doubled since the beginning of the movie because they’ve got to get us all ready and then they’ve sort of got to trash us. It’s just a lot of matching, a lot of continuity. They photograph everything, every bruise, every day. And we’ve had to obviously, with us being out in the desert, we are exposed to sun. I am an incredibly pale person so I’ve had to be coated in tanner and then coated in an illustrator blood and alcohol mix that sort of creates a sunburn and that goes on heavier and heavier every day to copy the elements, bruise from handcuffs and car crashes - all sorts of exciting things. It’s quite a bit.”

Stunts are Great But Bugs are a Different Matter: Bush readily admits she wasn’t so eager to work with the bugs. “You know, scorpions are great. They fascinate me. That’s the sort of thing that keeps me watching the Discovery Channel, watching Shark Week and watching Dirty Jobs. That stuff’s cool and exciting. Spiders on the other hand, they are in my home. They are things that upset me. The spider that they have is the size of an appendage. They want it crawling on my face and that I don’t feel so great about. But, you know, if we need to do it, I’m going to do it. I’ll suck it up. I will suck it up and do it, but that will probably be the only moment in this movie where I am not drawing on anything, where I’m really just freaking when that spider touches my face. No question.”

The Differences Between This New Version and the 1986 Film: “…What is very different from the first movie, my character is not Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character in any way. It’s different from the beginning with the relationship between Jim and Grace. We’re together. There’s major investment there, so seeing a couple at risk I think is a lot more upsetting than seeing two strangers who sort of met by happenstance.

Getting the Relationship Right: Sophia Bush says they were determined to show the reality of a relationship and not the typical Hollywood film couple in The Hitcher. "We’re going to keep it real. We’re not going to make everything perfect. It’s not just this sickly enjoyable couple. We bicker at moments and we laugh in a lot of moments, and it’s just really real. I think that the scenes that begin the film are enjoyable to watch because you just get it. Watching us together you understand it. You see how much we care about one another. I think, like I was saying, it gives you a much greater investment as an audience member watching the movie. It’s a lot scarier and there’s a lot more at stake when our lives are threatened.

The Behind the Scenes Team of The Hitcher: “It’s been amazing working with all of them. [Producers] Brad [Fuller] and Drew [Form] have ‘it’. When people talk about ‘it’, there’s no definition for it because otherwise there could be an instruction manual and everyone would have it. They have it. They understand what a movie like this needs. They understand how important it is to ground it. It’s been so nice to work with them and, I think, for myself and for Dave [Meyers] the director, to have them being his supervisors because he wants this film to be real. He wants it to be believable.

Squeezing in Movies During Her Hiatus from One Tree Hill: “This is a pretty difficult thing to do. With this hiatus, for instance, I wrapped the show and went home and helped finish casting this movie and then came out here. So it was a lot more preproduction, but last summer worked out really well. I went straight from the show to New Orleans and straight from New Orleans to Vancouver, then did a little bit of back and forth between Vancouver and Wilmington once the show started. I’ve actually had to go back twice in the period that we’ve been shooting this movie, back to the set of One Tree Hill. But it’s been great. It’s all working out really well.”