It should be a surprise to no one that Hollywood is a skeevy place, filled with unscrupulous directors and producers who don’t mind pressuring women into situations they don’t want to be in, for their own selfish gains. This is exactly what happened to ’90s T.V. star Courtney-Thorne Smith, who revealed she was coerced into appearing on camera scantily clad despite a clear no-nudity clause in her contract.
Thorne-Smith was a fixture of hit shows like Melrose Place, Ally McBeal, and later in her career Two and a Half Men and According to Jim. Everyone has to get their start somewhere though, and when Smith first started working as an actress she was a fresh-faced 17-year-old excited to get to be in a movie.
Thorne-Smith talked about that incident on her podcast, called Still the Place, which she co-hosts with fellow Melrose Place alums Laura Leighton and Daphne Zuniga. “One of my first movies I was 17 years old, and I was in Tahoe,” she explained. In the movie, which she did not name, her male co-star was in his late thirties.
In the script, the two slept together, and she was supposed to wear “one of his button-down shirts afterwards.” However, things took a turn when she actually showed up to the set. When she got to her dressing room she found a “a really sexy negligee.” Now, this could’ve gone a different way. She could’ve been too scared to say anything and just gone along with what the director told her to do. Fortunately, that’s not what happened.
She pushed back, explaining that her contract had a no-nudity clause and that the outfit wasn’t in the script. The director didn’t want to hear anything about it though. “They just trapped me,” she said. When she told the director firmly that she wasn’t going to wear the barely-there garments in the scene, she said a producer on the set called her “a baby.”
“I also had this mindset of, I’m 17 with an [older] man,” she said. “Like, I knew it was kind of off, but the shirt made it feel alright.”
The fact that she even had the wherewithal to do such a thing is stunning on its own, especially since this predates the #MeToo era by decades. Not giving up, she called her agent, who showed up on set to lend support to the young actress. On the podcast, she reflected on how easily the incident could’ve gone the other way, or how many skeezy agents would’ve just told her to suck it up or not supported her. Backed by her agent, her confident spirit refused to bow down to what she was being forced to do.
“I’m so grateful I had that ability to stand up for myself at that age. I’m amazed, actually. I had that ability at that age.”
While the production team on the film was “furious” about her decision as then the scene was shot as it was in the script, a crew member came up to her afterward and congratulated her for standing up for herself and not bowing down to those willing to lord their power over her then-budding career.
Published: Sep 24, 2024 08:01 am