Evangeline Lilly says she felt pressured into filming partially-nude scenes for ABC’s hit drama Lost.
In a recent interview for the podcast The Lost Boys, the Ant-Man and the Wasp actress said she felt coerced into doing the partially-nude scenes for her role as Kate Austen in Lost, particularly in the third season.
“In Season 3, I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt had no choice in the matter,” Lilly said, describing the scene. “And I was mortified and I was trembling when it finished. I was crying my eyes out, and I had to go and do a very formidable, very strong scene thereafter.”
According to ABC News, Lilly’s discomfort continued into season four of the show.
“In Season 4, another scene came up where Kate was undressing and I fought very hard to have that scene be under my control. And I failed to control it again,” she noted. “So I then said, ‘That’s it, no more. You can write whatever you want — I won’t do it. I will never take my clothes off on this show again.’ And I didn’t.”
Lilly has not filmed another scene involving any sort of nudity since her time on Lost, and often takes those sorts of scenes into consideration when selecting projects, according to Variety.
“I’ve been doing this now for 15 years. I’m a little bit better equipped now to know the ropes, to not have uncomfortable positions come up now,” Lilly said.
“Because I have had uncomfortable experiences, when I read scripts where it involves nudity, I pass. And it’s not because I think there’s anything wrong with doing nudity. It’s because I don’t trust that I can be comfortable and safe. I’m lucky; I’m in a privileged position because I can be picky. I feel for women who are struggling to come up in the industry and don’t know how to navigate that,” she continued.
The actress also noted in her interview her disappointment when Kate’s status on the show went from an “icon for strength and autonomy for women” to being thrust into a love traingle with two other characters: Jack (Matthew Fox) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway).
“I felt like my character went from being autonomous, really having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas, to chasing men around the island. And that irritated the s— out of me,” Lilly explained.
“I did throw scripts across rooms when I read them because I would get very frustrated by the diminishing amount of her own story that there was to play,” she added.
