Christina Ricci Says She Was Once Threatened With a Lawsuit for Not Wanting to Do a Sex Scene in a Movie

Actress Christina Ricci has been in Hollywood for a long time, kicking off her career in 1990 at the age of 10 when she starred in the film Mermaids alongside Cher and Winona Ryder. The next year she made her mark as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family, and starred in coming of age movies like Now and Then and Casper in the following years. She spent the next two decades in indie dramas and is back in the spotlight the past couple of years starring in the two hit series Yellowjackets and Wednesday.

As an actress over three decades, Ricci has seen the industry change, and she is now speaking out about an experience she had a while back, which she feels wouldn’t happen now.

In a recent interview on The View (via EW), Ricci explained that she once was threatened over refusing to perform a sex scene in a certain way. She was asked by the talk show’s hosts how film and television sets have changed over the years for young woman, to which she said they’re heard more clearly when they state their boundaries.

“It’s really great. Us older ladies talk about it all the time. It’s amazing to see that they don’t necessarily have to go through the things we had to go through. They’re able to say, ‘I don’t want to do this sex scene,’ ‘I’m not going to be naked.’ They can set boundaries for themselves that we were never allowed to do. Someone threatened to sue me once because I didn’t want to do this sex scene in a certain way. It’s really changed and it’s great to see.”

During a conversation last year with Euphoria Emmy nominee Sydney Sweeney as part of Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series, Ricci mentioned that she was once threatened with a lawsuit on a movie set. She didn’t reveal at the time that it was over refusing to do a sex scene.

“I remember once on a movie saying I wasn’t comfortable with something and they threatened to sue me if I didn’t do it. That would never happen now. I didn’t do it anyway. And they didn’t sue me.”

Talking to Sweeney about performing nude scenes, Ricci added:

“The thing that made me more uncomfortable was other people being uncomfortable with me being naked. So what I did, and you probably wouldn’t be allowed to do this now — I just stayed naked. I was like, ‘Don’t make me feel weird, like I’m the person who has to be ashamed.’…I haven’t done a sex scene in a couple years. I’m at that age where they don’t ask you to do them so much anymore. I mean, I don’t really enjoy them.”

It’s a bummer that it took so long for women to have a voice in Hollywood, and we still have a ways to go, but it’s great that actresses can feel more comfortable in voicing their opinions and concerns when it comes to how their bodies are viewed on screen.

Christina Ricci can be seen next in Yellowjackets Season 2 on Showtime on March 24th.