US actress Sydney Sweeney has had her fair share of nude scenes through her burgeoning career, admitting some of the experiences were mortifying.
Sydney Sweeney asked Euphoria creator Sam Levinson to cut some of her topless scenes from the HBO series, after previously suffering mortifying experiences with nude scenes.
“There are moments where [my character] Cassie was supposed to be shirtless and I would tell Sam, ‘I don’t really think that’s necessary here,’” she said in a new interview with the Independent. “He was like, ‘OK, we don’t need it.’”
The up-and-coming US actress, 24, told the outlet that Levinson, 37, was receptive to her requests and always made her feel safe, the New York Post reports.
“I’ve never felt like Sam has pushed it on me or was trying to get a nude scene into an HBO show,” she said. “When I didn’t want to do it, he didn’t make me.”
Sweeney further revealed that not all of her experiences with nudity have been as pleasant throughout her career.
“I’ve had experiences where I want to go home and scrub myself completely raw because I feel disgusting,” she said. “I didn’t feel comfortable with my castmate or the crew, and I just didn’t feel like my character would be doing it.”
The actress recalled feeling like she wasn’t able “to speak up” about her concerns at the time.
Sweeney went on to say that while she’s OK with showing some skin on TV, she felt her nudity in Euphoria distracted the public from taking her seriously as an actress.
“I’m very proud of my work in Euphoria. I thought it was a great performance. But no one talks about it because I got naked,” she said.
“I do The White Lotus and all of a sudden critics are paying attention. People are loving me. They’re going, ‘Oh my God, what’s she doing next?’ I was like, ‘Did you not see that in Euphoria? Did you not see that in The Handmaid’s Tale?’”
She said: “This is something that has bothered me for a while.”
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Sweeney believes there is a “stigma” against actresses who get naked on screen.
“When a guy has a sex scene or shows his body, he still wins awards and gets praise. But the moment a girl does it, it’s completely different,” she said.
Sweeney also claimed she was cyberbullied the first time she stripped down on the show.
She said online trolls shared screenshots of her partially nude scenes on social media and tagged her brother, Trent.
The actress called the bullying “disrespectful and distressing” and “the most hurtful thing that anybody could do”.
This story originally appeared on New York Post and was reproduced with permission