Cary Joji Fukunaga, the director of the most recent James Bond movie No Time to Die, has been accused of demanding an actress appear topless and firing her when she refused to do it.
In an interview with The Daily Beast Wednesday, Raeden Greer, who was cast for a small speaking role on True Detective when she was 24 years old, signed onto the HBO show under the impression there would be no nudity at all despite playing an exotic dancer.
Related: Why Emily Ratajkowski Waited Years Before Coming Forward With Robin Thicke Allegations
When she auditioned, the scene was initially set in the dressing room of a strip club, and there wasn’t even a nudity rider, which is a standard consent contract for actors agreeing to a certain level of undress and whether or not said nudity can be used in marketing material. It also allows performers to negotiate a higher paycheck if they agree to be naked on screen. So when she received the script and noticed her part involved a little bit of dancing, Greer became very wary of what execs may make her do:
“I started wondering, ‘Are they going to try something with me? Because this has never been mentioned that there was any nudity in this role.’”
And knowing that other stars like Alexandra Daddario appeared nude on the show before, the American Horror Story alum made sure with her agent and casting that she wouldn’t have to perform in the buff:
“So, I started asking after that, like, ‘To be clear, there’s no nudity involved in this role, right?’ I kept getting the answer from my agent and from casting — no, that would be absolutely unheard of if they asked you to do nudity after it wasn’t disclosed. There was no rider, there was no negotiating this into your contract, that would not happen, so stop asking about it because it’s making you look amateurish.’ So, I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna quit worrying about it.’”
However, on the day of filming in March 2013, she says her wardrobe consisted of nothing but a nude thong and pasties. After asking a PA to grab someone to talk about her feeling “extremely uncomfortable” with the costume or lack thereof, Fukunaga and another producer allegedly pulled her aside and pressured her into caving in. Greer recalled:
“I was, like, frantic because I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to get naked. I wasn’t expecting to [and] this is not fair. Are you expecting me to do this? Cary said to me at that moment, ‘Everybody on this show goes topless. All the women on the show go topless. Your character is a stripper, so you have to.’”
Actually, no, she doesn’t have to — especially if it’s not in her contract! But despite putting her foot down, the two men allegedly continued trying to push her into doing the scene:
“He was trying different things to convince me that it’s not a big deal. It [was] going to be very tasteful, or it’s just gonna be really insignificant in the background. I was like, ‘Well, if it’s so insignificant, why is he so insistent that I have to do this?’ It was just on and on and on with no budging.”
Greer still refused, and she says the two men eventually left to come up with a backup plan. But when another producer eventually circled back to her, she claims it was just to inform the Magic Mike XXL actress that they found an extra to take over the role and fired her:
“It was extremely s****y, it was horrible. To know how little I mattered and how little whatever I brought to the table meant to them. It was like, ‘You are just completely disposable and even somebody who has never f**king acted before can do this. Just go home, we’ll get anybody else to come in here and do this.’ So yeah, it was degrading. It was humiliating and made me feel terrible. As soon as I got in my car, I started crying and I called my agent and I told her what happened and she couldn’t believe it.”
Wow, what a d**k a thing to do to someone — again, especially when nudity wasn’t in the contract in the first place! Plenty of stripper storylines don’t have to call for nudity, but if that’s what the creatives wanted, they should have ensured it was all agreed on during the casting and negotiation process. But since they didn’t, according to her, they instead allegedly pressured her into doing something that wasn’t in the job description and then fired her when she refused.
But why didn’t she come forward with her story until 8 years later? Greer explained to The Daily Beast that she decided to do it after seeing Fukunaga open up about bringing feminism into the Bond franchise and explained that he hired Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a co-writer to ensure the film’s “female characters [are] more than just contrivances.” Something Raeden now finds hypocritical after her incident:
“Now, Cary is out here talking about his female characters — it’s like another slap in the face over and over and over. Yes, he has had an illustrious career — that was a star-maker for him, and what happened to me? Nobody cares. That was the human element that was missing that is so hurtful to me, that you could just look at somebody — a young girl who is starting out in her career who doesn’t want to show everything she’s got naked on camera spur of the moment, and you can’t understand that? He knew that he wasn’t doing [it] above board. He knew.”
Though maybe the director had realized alleged errors of past and wanted to be a good guy going forward? We don’t know, but we do understand how it would still frustrate the actress nonetheless.
At this time, Fukunaga hasn’t responded to the accusation. Reactions to the claims made by Greer, Perezcious readers? Let us know in the comments (below).
[Image via Andres Otero/WENN, Mario Mitsis/WENN]
The post Actress Raeden Greer Accuses Bond Director Of Firing Her For Not Going Topless On <i>True Detective</i> appeared first on Perez Hilton.
