Reese Witherspoon “said no” to ‘Fear’ sex scene at age 19: “It wasn’t a great experience.”
Acclaimed actor Reese Witherspoon recently shed light on a troubling on-set experience she encountered at the age of 19. During the filming of a sex scene for the 1996 thriller Fear, Witherspoon found herself subjected to an uncomfortable scenario that wasn’t initially agreed upon.
“I didn’t have control over it,” Witherspoon divulged, explaining how she was asked to perform a scene that was not detailed in the script. “It wasn’t explicit in the script that that’s what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it,” the Legally Blonde actor shared, before adding: “And I said no. It wasn’t a particularly great experience.”
Speaking in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, where she reminisced about her early career, Witherspoon confessed that whilst the incident wasn’t traumatising, it did serve as a formative moment for the actor. “I’m certainly not traumatised or anything by it, but it was formative,” she said.
“It’s another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change,” the actor continued, “and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze.”
True to her words, Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, has championed projects centred on female leads, such as Gone Girl, Wild, Big Little Lies, Where the Crawdads Sing, and the recent Emmy nominee Daisy Jones & the Six.
In the same interview, Witherspoon also expressed disappointment in missing out on leading roles in Clueless and, particularly, Baz Luhrmann’s cult Shakespeare adaptation, Romeo + Juliet.
“Oh my God, I wanted to do Romeo + Juliet so badly, so badly,” Witherspoon voiced, adding, “Of course, Claire Danes was amazing, but it was devastating to me that I didn’t get it after screen tests and getting really close.” Fans can anticipate Witherspoon’s return to The Morning Show, her Apple TV+ drama series, which will debut its third season this September.
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