Christina Ricci Would ‘Talk to Crew Members Naked’ on Set, Wanted Cast to ‘Stop Reacting’ to Nudity
Samantha Bergeson
Christina Ricci has been working in Hollywood since she was 10 years old, and after decades onscreen, the “Yellowjackets” star devised a unique tactic to de-stigmatizing female nudity onscreen: Just stay naked off-screen.
During Variety’s Actors on Actors roundtable, Ricci revealed to “Euphoria” actress Sydney Sweeney that she was most uncomfortable when other people were uncomfortable, so Ricci made her nudity a bit of a joke.
“Once I had to do a movie where I was naked pretty much the entire time,” Ricci said, presumably referencing 2006’s “Black Snake Moan” where she plays a sex addict opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Timberlake. “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.'”
Ricci continued, “I would talk to crew members naked. I wanted everybody around me to stop reacting to it, because then I would forget that I was naked. And it worked. But it’s one of the only times I’ve ever actually really felt comfortable being naked on camera.”
Sweeney called Ricci’s actions “kind of like a power move” on set, while Ricci joked she would “throw my five-foot-one stature around here.”
“‘You’re going to have to look at my boobs. Sorry!,'” Ricci added.
And the “Wednesday” actress opened up about just how much the industry has changed over the years. “With the conversations that were had on our set about intimacy and people’s comfort, it was the first time I realized that things have really changed, and women are now allowed to say, ‘I’m not comfortable,'” Ricci said. “I mean, 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.”
As for nudity nowadays following her full-frontal scene in “Z: The Beginning of Everything,” which she also produced, Ricci said, “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.”
