Actress Thandie Newton recounts being a victim of sexual abuse during an audition
Joel Ryan/AP
Thandie Newton.
In a recent interview with W Magazine, actress Thandie Newton opened up about an experience that many up-and-coming actors have suffered in their careers — being sexually exploited in an audition.
Newton, who will star next in the upcoming HBO series “Westworld,” recalled how when she was 18 years old, a director, whom she didn’t name, asked her to do inappropriate things on camera.
“A director, on a callback, had a camera shooting up my skirt and asked me to touch my t— and think about the guy making love to me in the scene,” she told W. “I thought, ‘OK, this is a little weird,’ but there was a female casting director in the room and I’d done weird stuff before so I did it.”
But that demeaning experience has haunted her. Newton said that at a film festival a producer, whom she claims was drunk at the time, came up to her and told her in a creepy way that, “I’ve seen you recently.” The producer then walked away giving no explanation. Newton was with her husband, who went to the producer to find out what he meant by that.
“It turns out that the director was showing that audition tape to his friends after poker games at his house. And they would all get off on it,” Newton told W.
This isn’t the first time Newton has spoken out about the incident. In 2013, she told CNN that the “casting couch” episode frightened her because she felt that was “the kinds of things I was expected to do in auditions.”
Looking back on it today, Newton said she now tells the story to prepare young aspiring actors for the dark side of the business.
“I was so so naïve when I started out and I realize now that we have to prepare our kids,” she said. “So many people in our business, they don’t want to be the ones to say something that’s a bum out… but one person will read this and it will stop them getting sexually abused by a director. That’s the person I’m interested in.”
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