Debra Messing Took Some Harsh Words from Director Alfonso Arau in 1995

Life is never going to be easy for females in Hollywood.  It’s just that simple.  While they should be paid equally, treated equally, and everything else equally there will always be those that simply don’t catch up with the times and are too closed off.  That’s putting it nicely.  The bottom line is that sexism still exists in Hollywood and it may be a long time before that ever changes.  Normally I wouldn’t bring up a story about a director verbally abusing an actor because it happens all the time.  We just don’t hear about it often.  But I have to say I was a little infuriated when I read what Debra Messing said about her filming experience for A Walk in the Clouds in 1995.   According to Jezebel

“I’d never been on a film before,” said Messing, “I was doing a love scene with Keanu Reeves. We started filming and the very famous director screamed ‘Cut’ and said, ‘How quickly can we get a plastic surgeon in here? Her nose is ruining my movie.’”

“It was a shock,” Messing continued, “I was so confident coming out of graduate school with my Masters in acting. I’d studied in London and I was so well equipped with skill sets, and then to walk on set and have that happen–I was reduced to an un-Hollywood nose.”

Despite the comments, filming and production continued.   Messing also revealed that Arau surprised her with a nudity scene that hadn’t been discussed. She says during the shoot, he lifted the sheet covering her and examined her body. Then: “He dropped the sheet on top of me like a used Kleenex, then walked away without a word,” she said, describing it as a power move that was intended to “demean me, strip me of my pride, my power.” There was no nudity in the final cut of the film, aside from Messing’s back.

While I sincerely hope that this story is rare in Hollywood as it seems excessive I fear that the opposite is true.  I think this happens more often than not and hopefully Messing coming out and telling this story will enable more actresses to make public the disgusting acts of their directors or other “power” personnel.  This is awful.