Jameela Jamil has revealed that she pulled her audition for the fourth season of You because she didn’t want to film intimate scenes.
The She-Hulk: Attorney at Law actress opened up about why she doesn’t “do sex scenes” during Tuesday’s episode of the Podcrushed podcast, hosted by Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari.
Jamil said she was initially supposed to audition for the latest season of Badgley-led Netflix series, but when she learned her “character was supposed to be quite sexy,” she “pulled out of the audition, because I am so shy about anything sexy that I can’t.”
The Good Place star didn’t say which role she was set to audition for, but she did bring up Badgley’s past comments on asking showrunner Sera Gamble for fewer sex scenes in crime-drama series.
“And then you fucking came out and was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not doing sex scenes anymore…,’” Jamil said. “And I was like, ‘Fucking hell, I didn’t even know that was a boundary that we could draw. That’s fantastic.’ But then I was like, ‘I should have gone and done the fucking show.’”
The Gossip Girl alum later told GQ during a March interview that the social media discussion regarding his sex scenes comments were “blown out of proportion.” “What I was speaking about wasn’t actually the final product,” he told the outlet at the time. “It was sort of like the culture inherent to the production of all movies but particularly those scenes. It’s like, look, we know that Hollywood has had a history of flagrant exploitation and abuse.”
The Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin actress also explained that she “can’t even watch sex scenes in films. … Even on my own, I have to fast-forward through sex scenes because I’ve become so shy about watching other people.”
Jamil clarifies that “it’s not a shame. … I feel there’s an awkwardness around it.”
Earlier in the conversation on Podcrushed, the actress shared a personal take, saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever been someone who would have enjoyed objectifying myself, personally. But that’s also because I have so much deep, like, childhood, like, sexual trauma stuff. So I think that was never in the cards for me.”
She continued, “You know, I still wear the little skirt or the busty top, but like, occasionally. But generally, I feel quite protective of myself in that way.”
