Debra Messing Says Director Ordered Her to Do Nude Scene in “A Walk in the Clouds”: ‘Your Job Is to Get Naked’
Messing says she wasn’t told she would shoot a nude scene and approached Alfonso Arau about feeling uncomfortable.
“Are you kidding me?” he allegedly said. “Your job is to get naked and say the lines, that’s it. You should be grateful to have this part. Get out!”
Distraught, Messing ran to the producers and asked them about why she was told there would be no nudity in the movie.
“We told you there would be no nudity in the domestic release,” they reportedly responded. “We never promised you there would be nudity in the international release.”
Her agents apparently told Messing, “you can say no and they fire you or you can do it and you keep your job.”
After pondering the situation, Messing decided to do the scene. The director apparently wanted to “set the sheet” when Messing laid down on the bed.
Debra Messing
“Will & Grace”
“He lifts it, scans my naked body, then drops the sheet on top of me like a used Kleenex. He walks away without a word,” she explained. In other scenes, she said, he walked around her and told her to cover both her nipple and her ass.
But the nudity wasn’t even used in the final edit of the film.
Debra Messing says she was pressured to do a nude scene on her 1995 movie “A Walk in the Clouds” and that she was subjected to a series of body humiliations on set.
At the MAKERS conference in Palos Verdes this week, the actress recounted her time on the set of her first movie which also starred Keanue Reeves and was directed by Alfonso Arau. She began her story by saying that the “a– hat” director once told her that her “nose is ruining my movie.”
“How quickly can we get a plastic surgeon in here?” He allegedly shouted after ending a scene. “Her nose is ruining my movie! … I can’t do this! Look at this!”
Messing said she “felt ugly, I felt like garbage, and I felt deep shame.”
The actress said she “felt deep shame” for her Jewish heritage, remembering anti-Semitic incidents from her childhood in a community without Jewish people.
But perhaps the most disturbing allegation comes from the second day of filming, where Reeves was set to find Messing’s character in bed with another man. Messing says she wasn’t told she would shoot a nude scene and approached Arau about feeling uncomfortable.
Representatives for Arau, Zucker Brothers Productions or Fox have not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment. But Arau’s rep told TooFab.com that the claims are “false” and “inaccurate.”
Her agents apparently told Messing, “you can say no and they fire you or you can do it and you keep your job.”
After pondering the situation, Messing decided to do the scene.
But the nudity wasn’t even used in the final edit of the film, with Debra believing the “trauma” was a calculated “power play” to “demean” her and “strip” her of her “pride and power”.
“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.”
Nine years after shooting ‘A Walk in the Clouds’, Debra ran into Alfonso in the street.
She recalled: “He said, ‘Bella! It’s been so long, you were so funny in the movie, I’m so happy to see you again!’ I said, ‘Thank you,’ and I turned around and never looked back.”
And the actress is thankful she never gave into the pressure to alter her appearance.
She said: “I have a strong nose, I have small breasts. I’m a fucking original. My nose and I have come this far, and like Barbra Streisand I’m defiantly keeping it.”
But that wasn’t the end of it. Later on in her career, Messing said, she was cast on “Will & Grace” and was forced to wear chicken cutlets to bring her bra size up to a C-cup. After wearing them for three weeks, she told the costume designer she didn’t want them anymore because “she looked stupid.”
She, however, was told she “had to” because it was in a “note from the president of the network.” After she asked to speak to the president, she never saw those cutlets again.