Hollywood has infamously been unwelcoming — if not unsafe — to young women stars since its inception, and Christina Ricci shed light on her own unsavory experience involving a sex scene in a recent interview on The View. The Yellowjackets star — who’s been acting since she was a child in projects like Casper and The Addams Family — revealed that she was once threatened with a lawsuit for refusing to do the scene “a certain way.”
Ricci plays the modern version of Misty Quigley in Showtime’s Yellowjackets, which follows a girls high school soccer team that survived a plane crash in the ’90s. Speaking about the actors who play the younger versions of the cast, Ricci explained how she’s seen the entertainment industry improve over time and allow for a better working environment for the next generation of actors.
“It’s amazing to see that they don’t necessarily have to go through things that we had to go through,” Ricci said. “They’re able to say, ‘I don’t want to do this sex scene. I’m not going to be naked.’ They can set boundaries for themselves that we were never allowed to do. Someone threatened to sue me once because I didn’t want to do this sex scene in a certain way.”
The View co-host Joy Behar countered that there seems to be more sex scenes in film and television now than ever, but Ricci argued that more transparency about the work and agency given to actors allows for a safer environment. “Now that it’s more of their choice instead of something you’re forced to do, then you can get into the artistry of it, or know how important it is for the story. I think that when you take away somebody’s control over something like that, it just makes you never want to do it.”
Watch Ricci’s full appearance on The View below. Yellowjackets Season 2 premieres March 24th on Showtime.