23 Times Actors Had To Film A Scene They Found Inappropriate, Uncomfortable, Or Just Plain Cringe-Worthy
1.Jessica Alba hated filming her character Sue's death scene in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
Alba said filming the scene made her want to stop acting. Director Tim Story allegedly said as she was filming, "It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica...Don't do that thing with your face. Just make it flat. We can CGI the tears in." Alba said this made her feel like her emotions and instincts weren't good enough, and that people didn't "want [her] to be a person."
2.Denzel Washington got pretty tired of filming the Equalizer scene when his character, Robert, sets off the sprinklers in a warehouse.
The movie's climactic ending, which featured the sprinklers going off, took days to film. Washington said he understood that it looked cool, but that he didn't care how cool it looked after filming multiple 13-hour days dripping wet.
3.Hilarie Burton found the Season 1 One Tree Hill scene where Peyton unbuttoned Lucas's shirt and kissed his stomach extremely uncomfortable to film.
Burton revealed on a recent episode of the One Tree Hill podcast, Drama Queens, that she told the director she would only do a maximum of three takes for the intimate scene. "I was, like, crying in my trailer. I'm like, 'I don't want to do this,'" Hilarie said. "'It feels dirty. It feels like they're trying to sex everything up.'"
4.Sophia Bush fought with her boss on One Tree Hill over scenes that included teenage Brooke in her underwear.
“I was sort of unaware of the power dynamics at play and I would just say things. I’d be like, ‘I’m not doing this. Stop writing [these] scenes,’” Bush revealed on Ashley Graham's Pretty Big Deal podcast. "I remember my boss kept writing scenes for me to be in my underwear. And I was like, ‘I’m not doing this. This is inappropriate. Like, I don’t think this is what we should be teaching 16-year-old girls to be doing, to be seeking validation this way.’”
5.Evangeline Lilly disliked most of her Lost character Kate's later storylines — especially when she chased after Jack in Season 3 and ended up getting captured by The Others.
She felt Kate had been reduced to "chasing men around the island." She also spoke of an unspecified Season 3 scene where she felt "cornered" into doing a partial nudity scene: "I felt [like I] had no choice in the matter. I was mortified and I was trembling, and when it finished, I was crying my eyes out and I had to go on [to] do a very formidable, very strong scene immediately thereafter." She also mentioned a similar scene in Season 4, revealing that afterward, she told producers she would no longer do any nude scenes.
6.Penn Badgley was "disgusted" after filming the scene where his character, Joe, masturbates outside Beck's apartment on You.
Penn said he found himself "surprisingly disgusted," saying he did not want to do the scene. He's previously said playing Joe takes a toll on his psyche, but also called it a "deep psychological exploration."
7.Miriam McDonald was dissatisfied with the way Emma's eating disorder storyline was portrayed on Degrassi: The Next Generation.
McDonald recently opened up about the subject during a Q&A on Instagram Live. "That is such a massive issue for me," McDonald said of the way Emma's eating disorder — which only lasted a couple of episodes — was portrayed. "My sister passed away after 15 years with a very serious eating disorder, so I think that the small way that the episodes glossed over it were, in my opinion, almost a disservice. It's not something I've really talked about, my experiences in the early seasons with an eating disorder of my own. Having gone through it so personally, I just really wish that more could've been done."
8.Lyle Lettau hated a particular Tristan and Miles scene in Season 4 of Degrassi: Next Class so much that the show actually cut it altogether.
The deleted scene in question would have been a part of Next Class Season 4, Episode 3, the same episode that featured Miles explicitly labeling himself as bisexual for the first time. You can watch the full interview between Lettau and Adamo Rugiero here (with Lettau's commentary about this particular scene beginning around 14:08).
9.James Marsters hated filming the scene where Spike attempted to rape Buffy in Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Marsters called it "the hardest day of [his] professional life," saying he was curled up in a fetal position between takes. "I can’t watch scenes like that. I choose not to. I won’t go to a movie that has something like that. It’s a specific hot button for me." However, he ultimately said he was glad they did it, as it reminded the audience Spike was evil and also gave Spike a good reason to want a soul.
10.Mila Kunis called her character Odile's sex scene with Black Swan costar Natalie Portman "uncomfortable."
Fox Searchlight Pictures
While she called the scene “important” for her character’s journey and the story overall, Kunis said it was extremely awkward to film a sex scene with a close friend: “It's uncomfortable doing a sex scene. It's just bizarre. Luckily, we were friends, so we were able to get through it."
11.Naya Rivera thought Santana's rant to Kurt on Glee was too mean and crossed the line by insulting Chris Colfer's appearance.
12.Ian Harding was uncomfortable with the message that Ezra and Aria's student-teacher relationship sent on Pretty Little Liars.
"One company dropped its advertising for our show in one of the early seasons, because they didn't agree with the relationship. And I was like, 'No shit, our relationship is illegal!'" Harding said in an interview. "And [showrunner] Marlene [King] said, 'No, it's not yours, it's Emily’s relationship [that's the problem].' So I could be seen as a statutory rapist, and people are like, 'I know, but love knows no bounds, as long as there is a penis and a vagina involved.'"
13.Candice King felt stressed and dealt with imposter syndrome in the Vampire Diaries scenes where her character, Caroline, cried over her mother Liz's death.
The CW
“I really don’t like crying on screen," Accola said, calling the experience stressful. "I won’t sleep for a week if I know I have to cry." She recalled showrunner Julie Plec telling her she'd have to cry in scenes when her character was grieving her mother's death. Accola said she felt out of her comfort zone and like she shouldn't be there, but ultimately decided to try her best.
14.Danielle Rose Russell, Kaylee Bryant, and Jenny Boyd were NOT fans of the scene where the giant spider exploded on them in Season 1 of Legacies.
The scene, which featured "spider guts" exploding all over them, required the actors to get drenched in slime, all while filming in the heat. You can watch the full behind-the-scenes clip here.
15.Lauren Graham felt uncomfortable with Lorelai's reaction to overhearing Rory telling Paris she's still a virgin in Season 3 of Gilmore Girls.
"I didn't like that judgment about girls and the decisions they make. But they wanted me to say that, so I did," Graham said in a 2003 interview. "[But] lots of people have come up to me and said, 'I loved it when you said that.' So, who knows? Obviously, that line reflected the way some people felt."
16.Alexis Bledel was disappointed with Rory's ending on Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
The revival ended on a cliffhanger, with Rory — who's 32, single, and unemployed — revealing to Lorelai that she's pregnant (most likely with Logan's baby). "It certainly wasn't the ending I expected," Bledel said. "I had told [creator] Amy [Sherman-Palladino] that I hoped Rory would end on a high note after all of her hard work. I wanted to see her succeed and be thriving. So it was a hard thing for me to digest."
17.Courteney Cox called the fountain part of the opening credits for Friends a "nightmare to film."
NBC
“We were in that fountain for a long time. I don’t know who, somebody thought that would just be really fun,” Cox said in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres. “It’s not fun to be dancing in a fountain for hours and hours.”
18.Matt LeBlanc initially refused to do the storyline where his character, Joey, dated Rachel on Friends.
"In the beginning, Matt LeBlanc did not want to do that story," Friends executive producer/director Kevin S. Bright revealed in an interview. "He was very firmly against it, saying that he's Ross's friend, and that the type of friend that Joey is would never go and take someone else's girlfriend." Bright said it "took a lot of conversations" to get LeBlanc to eventually agree to do the storyline.
19.David Schwimmer was not a big fan of the scenes with the monkey on Friends.
Ross had a pet monkey, Marcel, in Season 1. "The monkey — obviously, it was trained, and it had to hit its mark and do its thing right at the perfect time — but what inevitably began to happen was we would all have choreographed bits kind of timed out, and it would get messed up because the monkey didn't do its job right," Schwimmer explained during the Friends reunion special. "So, we'd have to reset; we'd have to go again because the monkey didn't get it right."
20.Lili Reinhart asked Riverdale to stop including "Dark Betty" scenes because she found them so uncomfortable to film.
“I think it kind of became a mockery of itself,” Reinhart said about her character's alter ego during an interview with Teen Vogue. “It was supposed to be this dark side of her that she wasn’t able to express otherwise, and it just became this weird sexual thing that people didn’t really understand.”
21.Emilia Clarke called Daenerys's nude scenes in Season 1 of Game of Thrones "terrifying" to shoot.
"I’d been on a film set twice before then, and I’m now on a film set completely naked with all of these people, and I don’t know what I’m meant to do, and I don’t know what’s expected of me, and I don’t know what you want," Clarke said. However, she did say that costar Jason Momoa helped make her feel safe in their love scenes, showing her how they were supposed to go and demanding proper treatment for Clarke.
22.Kit Harington called filming scenes when his character, Jon, interacted with Daenerys's dragons in Game of Thrones "horrific."
HBO
Harrington brushed off Clarke’s complaints about filming scenes with CGI dragons until he had to film similar scenes: “She was absolutely right. It was horrific. It’s not acting at all. It is not acting, it never will be acting, and it is not what I’d signed up for. It is very uncomfortable as a man.”
23.And finally, Daniel Radcliffe was NOT fond of any of the quidditch scenes he filmed in the Harry Potter films.
Warner Bros.
"Quidditch is right up there with the least fun things I've done on Harry Potter...It's not a pleasant experience, it does hurt quite a lot, and it's not something I would rush back to," he said of the experience.
