Debra Messing revealed that she was pressured into doing a nude scene in the movie A Walk in the Clouds by the film’s director.
At the MAKERS conference in Palos Verdes last week, the actress revealed her first time working on a movie. Messing said that while working on the project, which starred Keanu Reeves and directed by Alfonso Arau, the film’s director humiliated her on set by talking about her body.
Messing began her story by saying that the film’s director told her that her “nose is ruining my movie.”
“How quickly can we get a plastic surgeon in here?” she says he shouted after ending a scene. “Her nose is ruining my movie! … I can’t do this! Look at this!”
The actress went on to say that on the second day of filming, Reeves character was supposed to find her in bed with another man. Messing says she was not told that she would have to film a nude scene in the movie and approached the director about the scene.
“Are you kidding me?” she said he told her. “Your job is to get naked and say the lines, that’s it. You should be grateful to have this part. Get out!”
Messing said she ran and talked to the producers, and asked them why she was told there would be no nudity in the feature film. She said the producers told her that they promised her no nudity in the domestic release, but not in the international release.
Messing then called her agents who told her, “you can say no, and they fire you, or you can do it, and you keep your job.”
After thinking about, Messing decided to do the scene.
“It turns out, after all, this trauma, the only part of my body that is seen naked in the film is my back,” she said. “The whole thing was a power play, a game. And the goal, to demean me, to strip me of my power and make me feel on a cellular level his dominance over me.”
She added, “I told my agents I would never work with that a–hole again.”
Messing also revealed what it was like working on NBC’s hit TV series Will & Grace. Messing says she was forced to wear chicken cutlets to bring her bra size up to a C-cup. After wearing the chicken cutlets for several weeks, she told the costume designer she had enough because “she looked stupid.”
However, she was told she “had to” because it was in a “note from the president of the network.” Messing never had to wear the cutlets again after she asked to speak to the president.
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