NEW YORK – Ciera Payton had just turned 18 when she was cast in a lead roleopposite Steven Seagal in the 2007 film “Flight of Fury.” It was her firstprofessional acting job, and filming would take place in Romania.
But before sending her to set, neither the film’s producers nor her agentshowed her the film’s full script, Payton says. So it wasn’t until halfwaythrough her flight that the sophomore at University of North Carolina’sdrama program read the screenplay for the first time and discovered a scenein which a character comes out of the shower naked.
“I was like, ‘That’s my character,'” she says. “My heart began pounding.”She would also be performing a sex scene with another woman.
Actresses are frequently pressured to appear nude or semi-nude, especiallyearly in their careers.When she stepped off the plane, knowing no one else on set and withoutenough money to even place an international phone call, Payton decided togo straight to the top: She mustered up her courage, and approached Seagalin his trailer. After thanking him for the opportunity, she explained thatshe hadn’t been informed about the expected nude scene, and she wasn’tcomfortable performing it.
“He’s kind of sitting there,” says Payton, “and he’s trying to think ofwhat to say, and he goes, ‘You won’t even show your tits?’ ”
The actor sent Payton outside and gathered some of the other on-sethigher-ups into his trailer, all of whom were male. Then he called Paytonback in to question her. Was she really not going to perform the nudescenes? Wouldn’t she just take her top off? “At one point,” says Payton,”somebody in the room is just like, ‘You know, we stuck our neck out tohire you for this.’ ”
Women in the film and television industry are frequently pressured toperform nude or nearly nude scenes, experiencing everything from subtlecoercion to threats and verbal abuse at the hands of directors orproducers. In a December 2017 New York Times essay, Salma Hayek said thedisgraced producer Harvey Weinstein threatened to shut down production onthe 2002 film “Frida” if she didn’t appear fully nude in a sex scene withanother woman. Other well-known actresses, including Sarah Jessica Parkerand Debra Messing, have gone public with similar ordeals involvingdifferent men (Parker did not end up doing the scene).
On film sets that aren’t regulated by SAG-AFTRA, coerced nudity can be aneven bigger problem.Often, as with these now-famous women, as well as the women The WashingtonPost interviewed for this story, the strong-arming happens early in aperformer’s career, when they have little to no influence on-set and areworking to establish themselves in the industry. Some reported worryingthey would get a reputation for being “difficult” if they said no to therequests. Others feared being replaced, fired or put on an industryblacklist. Still more felt cornered or frightened in the moment, and agreedto go along with the demands in order to make the coercion end.
Actresses have spoken about these events throughout the years, but it’s notuntil now, with the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements working to combat sexualmisconduct and fight for true gender equality, that their concerns arebeing taken more seriously.
“It happens to everyone,” says Loan Dang, a partner at the LosAngeles-based entertainment law firm Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein &Lezcano. “The actor gets pressured into doing something they don’t feelcomfortable with. Everyone says, ‘You’re holding stuff up, can you make adecision?’ You’re with these people on-set, you work with them, so then youthink, ‘Oh God, how do I say no?’ ”
“It feels surprisingly like high school, like peer pressure,” adds actressAlysia Reiner (“Orange Is the New Black,” “Better Things”) who was made toperform a sex scene that was not part of the original script early in hercareer. “Particularly as a young actor, there is this fear of, ‘I will getfired, and I need this job.’ There’s this feeling of being easilyreplaceable.”
Hollywood wasn’t always so fixated on nudity. For several decades in theearly half of the 20th century, the industry was self-censored viaregulations known as the Motion Picture Production Code. Around the mid- tolate-1950s, those regulations eased, and films began to depict actors invarious states of undress.
But those depictions were never spread equally between men and women. By2016, 25.6 percent of speaking or named female characters in the year’stop-grossing 100 fictional films were depicted heavily exposed (such as”chest/cleavage, midriff, or high upper thigh thigh”), partially nude ornude as compared to 9.2 percent of men, according to research done by theUniversity of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Thesefigures have were relatively consistent in the decade since 2006.
SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents film and television actors, includes anudity clause in its collective bargaining agreement with the Alliance ofMotion Picture and Television Producers. In addition to other requirements,producers must alert performers to any expected nude scenes or sex scenesprior to their audition, obtain separate written consent from the actor forany such scenes and enforce a closed set when filming the scenes.
These rules are the bare minimum, says Dang. “People who haverepresentation will negotiate beyond that.”
For her clients – who range from household names to lesser-known performers- Dang typically asks for a handful of other protections. Those may includean in-depth conversation between the director and her client about thescene, the ability for her client to review footage after filming the sceneand the destruction of any footage from the scene that isn’t going to beused. Her negotiations also include explicit detail about what will andwill not be shown onscreen, from nipples to pubic hair to shots of anactor’s backside.
But even with these protections in place, some directors or producers pushfor more explicit performances once actors arrive on-set. If actors alertSAG-AFTRA to such behavior, a union representative is supposed tointervene. SAG-AFTRA also employs representatives tasked with visiting setsto ensure compliance, but with thousands of productions happening everyyear, the union does not have enough personnel to send to each location.Producers and directors are expected to abide by the rules in good faith -and not all of them do. (SAG-AFTRA declined to comment on the record forthis story).
“Despite the fact that SAG has all these rules, despite the fact that(actors) have attorneys and have negotiated … they get to the set and theactor is asked to do something beyond what’s been agreed to,” says Dang.
Benita Robledo, an actress turned director who has had roles on “GossipGirl,” the CW’s “Teen Wolf” and 2008’s “What Happens in Vegas,” says sheexperienced intimidation similar to Payton on the set of 2016’s”Dependent’s Day.” While filming the largely improvised independent featurefilm, she spent hours each day with her director and co-star working outdialogue and scenes. So when the director, Michael David Lynch, suggestedthey do a full frontal nude scene, Robledo says she felt comfortabletelling him in no uncertain terms that she didn’t want to do it.
But, she says, upon her refusal, Lynch became demanding, telling her thescene depicted something “real” and the movie needed to be authentic. Heeventually agreed to film two versions of the scene – one that framed theshot without exposing her – and promised to give her approval on the finalversion. It wasn’t until several months later, though, when Robledo was ina theater full of people for the film’s first screening, that she saw hisfinal cut, she says. “I see myself huge, 50 feet high, completely naked.”
Deciding she could not go through with a release of the film in its currentiteration, Robledo emailed Lynch to let him know. He called her back, shesays, and began berating her. “He’s screaming at me that I’m stealing hismovie from him, and he says, ‘You shouldn’t be upset, because guys wereasking me at the screening for your number because they wanted to f—you.'”
After several months, Lynch agreed to reshoot the approximately 30-secondscene with Robledo wearing a T-shirt. She was so disturbed by his behavior,though, that she opted out of appearing publicly in support of the film,despite winning an award for best actress at the Hill Country Film Festivalin Texas.
She says, “I will never know what I missed out on by not doing press,”which can be an important opportunity for actors to network, get publicityand meet industry insiders.
When reached for comment, Lynch denied the allegations, stating that thenude scene in question was in the script, that Robledo “wanted to do it,”and that her recollection of his statements are inaccurate. “During thecreative process,” he says, “there are always going to be emotionalconversations and disagreements.”
A standard of aggressive on-set behavior has been defined not only by menlike Weinstein, but also by directors who have been told that they areauteurs and can therefore behave in any way they see fit in service oftheir vision.
“In terms of people that throw their weight around set, the stories are amile deep,” says a Los Angeles-based talent manager who asked to remainanonymous to protect his clients from being wrongly implicated. “There isjust a level of appalling personal behavior – bullying, yelling,ridiculousness – that would not happen in a lot of other (professional)settings.”
“Once you are on set, the only thing that’s precious is the director’svision,” says Robledo. “It’s all that matters. Everyone is hustling to makethat work; grips, wardrobe, everyone. If you’re not playing along, thenyou’re the a–hole.”
On film sets that aren’t regulated by SAG-AFTRA, coerced nudity can be aneven bigger problem. Many women interviewed said they had experiencedsexual misconduct on such sets. And their experiences with nude scenesfollow a pattern: An actress reaches a verbal agreement with a director orproducer, but it goes out the window once cameras begin rolling.
Actress and filmmaker Croix Provence says she was working on a non-unionfilm in 2012 when she was coerced into taking off a nude-colored swimsuitfor a shower scene after the director explicitly agreed that she could becovered. She recalled the director telling her things like, “There’s no wayaround it, it’s ruining the shot. Can you just be cooperative?”
Another actress, Amber Sealey, says she was pressured by a director toperform a sex scene in 1997 with a man who, only months before, sexuallyassaulted her. “I explained what had happened, and the director was like,’Well, that’s not really a big deal,’ ” she says.
Writer and actress Tatiana Paris says she was coerced into taking herclothes off during a sex scene on the set of a short film in 2011 afterreaching a verbal and written agreement with director establishing that shewould not perform nude. During the scene, the actor with whom she wasperforming began hitting her on the backside, and continued even after sheasked him to stop. The cameras kept rolling.
Later, when the crew gathered to watch footage from that day, Paris saysone of the assistant directors turned to the rest of the group and asked,”Does anyone else feel like we just watched a girl get raped?”
Whether actors are protected by the union or not, they don’t have muchrecourse if they bare more than they want to, regardless of the reason.That’s because nudity contracts can be amended, says Dang, and a verbal,on-the-spot agreement is tantamount to legal consent.
For that reason, some industry insiders are pushing for a system in whichan advocate would be present on-set during filming of nude scenes or sexscenes. That person could be an agent or manager, a friend or a personassigned by SAG-AFTRA who would intervene if an actor is asked to dosomething he or she hasn’t agreed to.
Reiner says she has informally had co-conspirators who helped her avoidon-set coercion, including a female co-star in one case and a male co-starin another. She would like to see such allies become required.
“My experience is that having an advocate on-set is everything,” saysReiner. “I think it would go a long, long way.”
Dang agrees. The advocate would “have the contract in front of them, andsay, ‘By the way, stop.’ That could be an immediate solution. … It’ssomething that you can do today.”
In the meantime, women who have already experienced such violations havehad to advocate for themselves. When Payton’s post-shower scene in “Flightof Fury” was finally filmed, she convinced on-set higher-ups to let herwear a negligee rather than appear nude.
Producers of “Flight of Fury” did not respond to multiple requests forcomment. Seagal also has not been available for comment, and AnthonyFalangetti, an attorney representing Seagal, states that, “It appears basedupon Ms. Payton’s assertions, that she did not have to do anything shedidn’t want to do.”
Still, she was pushed far beyond her comfort zone; she was clothed for thesex scene with her female co-star, but their interaction was graphic, andit was choreographed by the same all-male team that pressured her toperform topless.
“They are choreographing, ‘Suck her breast here, kiss her there, pull herhair back,” says Payton. “And they keep saying, ‘Remember what you’redoing, that’s good, that’s good.’ It was so creepy. … I just felt really(terrible), and very powerless.”
It took Payton, who has since gone on to appear on “Californication,””Ballers” and “The Walking Dead,” a long time to come to terms with whathappened. “To be reduced to some sex toy or something, none of that feelsgood,” she says.
She’s speaking up now in the hopes that others won’t have to go throughwhat she went through.
“Women are taught to just not say anything,” she says. “I’m choosing tojoin the conversation.” – The Washington Post