NEW YORK, June 24 (UPI) -- The O.C. alum Chris Carmack and One Tree Hill icon Sophia Bush say they were happy to finally share the screen this year in the new thriller The Stranger in My Home and TV hospital drama Grey's Anatomy.
"Are you kidding me? An opportunity to work with Sophia Bush? That's a dream come true," Carmack, 44, told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
"You sweet soul," Bush, 42, addressed Carmack.
"We had such a ball together," she said. "It's kind of a trip to play two characters who go on such a wild ride together and then get to overlap with Chris' world on Grey's, as well. It's been such a treat for me. I've spent the last year with this guy and he's a gem."
The pairing is drawing online excitement from millennials who watched their hit young adult dramas during the early 2000s and younger fans who discovered the shows more recently on streaming platforms.
"I'm thrilled about it," Bush said. "It's kind of hilarious and totally sweet."
Carmack added: "It speaks a lot to the projects we worked on the past, their staying power, the nostalgia surrounding both The O.C. and One Tree Hill. I'm surprised it took this long, but I'll take it."
Available on digital platforms Tuesday, the adaptation of Adele Parks' novel The Stranger in My Home co-stars Amiah Miller and Chris Johnson. Jeff Fisher directed the film from a screenplay by Chris Sivertson.
The story follows what happens when Tom (Carmack) arrives on the doorstep of Ali (Bush) and Jeff (Johnson) and announces their teen daughter Katie (Miller) was switched at birth with his own.
"It speaks to something that almost sounds like an urban legend, right? Babies being switched at birth. It seems impossible, but it has happened to people," Bush said.
"It's a very heightened experience that allows you to ask universal questions about love and family and identity and belonging and nature versus nurture and, then, it's this high-drama domestic thriller, verging into sort of fatal obsession," she added. "That is exactly the kind of movie that you want to watch and, certainly, be a part of."
Carmack said he was intrigued by Tom's visceral fear of doubting his own reality when he learns the truth about his daughters' identities.
"Once you're on that kind of shaky ground, anything is possible," he added.
"It really unfolds in surprising ways, and we start to have grief and obsession and all of these things. It peels apart like an onion and it's a great story and a great script, based on a great book with a great director, Jeff Fisher. No way to go wrong."
Tom and Ali's relationship is understandably complicated.
"These two characters are connected immediately in a very intimate way through the fact that they share a daughter they've never met. They share two daughters, in fact," Carmack said.
"They want to know each other, but they're scared of each other," he added. "I don't want to give too much away about Tom's Intentions, but i think he finds more in Ali than maybe she's ready for."
Bush likened what the characters endure in the film to "emotional whiplash."
"That was something that really fascinated me -- the idea that these two people are strangers and, then, in an instant, they are the most intimately connected in a way that so few people would be able to relate to or counsel them on or help them through," she said. "They are not sure how to behave around each other."
Bush noted that Ali is initially suspicious of Tom when he arrives on her doorstep, but her feelings evolve over the course of the movie.
"Of course, she wants to understand him, of course she wants to figure out how to make space in her family for him," Bush said.
"The constant back and forth of it is what allows, perhaps, for certain things to unfold in the way they do, for things to go a little too far, for things to get a little too risky, because how could they not?" Bush added. "This is such an insane thing they're experiencing together and that, for me, really humanized them both."
