In the end, those aren’t the major life events Bush focuses on when looking back on the show’s impressive nine-year run. “Twenty-nine babies were born between our cast and crew while we were filming that show,” she said, her face instantly lighting up. “I watched kids grow up, I saw people get married, I held people through divorces and breakups and deaths of parents and grandparents; there was so much life on those sets, which is why I was a hysterical mess for the last two episodes. I couldn’t stop crying.”
After the series finale aired in April 2012, the tears eventually dried and Bush began to look for her next project. “I hadn’t slept in a decade,” she said with a laugh. “I had been getting up at 4 a.m. every day and going to sleep at midnight. I didn’t need to do another show — I would have
loved to sleep, but I
just loved the script
for Partners so much.”
Partners was a CBS
comedy from Will &
Grace’s Max Mutchnick
and David Kohan that
was picked up for the
2012–2013 television
season. It revolved
around two best
friends, one gay
(Michael Urie) and one straight (David Krumholtz), and their significant others (Brandon Routh and Bush, respectively). But Partners failed to draw a large enough audience for CBS and, after six episodes, the show was canceled. Devastated, Bush decided to give herself the break she previously longed for. “I gave myself some space and traveled for two and a half months,” she said. “I opened the school I built for my 30th birthday in Guatemala, and then built another school in Guatemala.”
By that point in time — November 2012 — philanthropy had become as synonymous with Bush’s name as acting. She had secured mainstream coverage for The Democratic National Convention, Fuck Cancer, Invisible Children, Global Green Gulf Relief, DoSomething.org, Pencils of Promise, Global Poverty Project, and I Am That Girl while other actresses were praying their publicists could hide their DUIs, sex tapes, and rehab stints from TMZ.
“One of my best friends describes me as an activist who is inconvenienced — in a good way — by her career as an actress,” said Bush with a laugh. “I love my job, but I couldn’t keep doing this if it ever actually precluded me from working on the world. I would just get another job.”
So far, that’s not necessary. Bush soon found herself back on television with NBC’s Chicago P.D., a spin-off of Chicago Fire that premiered in January. She plays Erin Lindsay, a recovering
drug addict who’s
now a tough-as-nails
detective, and
perfectly fits the
intellectual
requirements Bush
requires of all her
characters.
“Imagine if you
walked into a house,
and the person who
lived there gave you a
tour, but then you discovered there was a trap door and a whole other house underground,” Bush said of her character. “That’s kind of who Lindsay is to me.”
Ironically, as a result of playing the character, Bush has ended up discovering a trap door within herself as well. “I’ve found a lot more space to embrace my own power as a woman through playing Erin, who is very still and quiet,” the actress said, her voice softening. “Whoever knows me knows I could talk to a wall all day; I wanna have five-hour dinners and drink wine with the people I love and dig into issues and get really deep with people. That is a quality I like about myself. But there’s also something to be said for people who don’t have to talk for you to know who they are. People have always told me that I have a presence, but I never used to understand what that meant. Funnily enough, I’m learning about my presence as a human by playing a woman who is much more comfortable sitting silently in a room than I am.”