In an interview for Lost podcast The LOST Boys, Evangeline Lilly revealed that she won't do nude scenes anymore thanks to two incidents on the set of the ABC fantasy series.
"In season 3, I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt I had no choice in the matter," Lilly told Jacob Stolworthy, one of two co-hosts of the podcast. (Stolworthy is also a digital culture reporter for The Independent.) Lilly said that she was crying and "trembling" during the scene. She also described an instance during season 4 when she tried to have control over a scene that required partial nudity. (Refinery29 has reached out to production for Lost for comment.)
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She continued, "So, I said: ‘That’s it — no more. You can write whatever you want, I won’t do it. I will never take my clothes off on this show again' — and I didn’t.”
The producers of Lost, J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Jack Bender, and Carlton Cuse, issued a joint statement of apology to Lilly after she said she felt forced to be nude on screen on the show.
"Our response to Evie’s comments in the media was to immediately reach out to her to profoundly apologize for the experience she detailed while working on Lost," the men said in their statement. "We have not yet connected with her, but remain deeply and sincerely sorry. No person should ever feel unsafe at work. Period."
Lilly, currently the star of Ant-Man & The Wasp, is far from the first actress to have negative feelings toward semi-nudity. Mila Kunis wrote a letter for Variety in 2016 deriding a Hollywood producer for telling her she'd "never work in this town again" because she refused to go topless on a magazine cover. Rachel Bilson in 2008 revealed that she almost lost a role thanks to her refusal to do nudity. Not to mention, in December, Salma Hayek detailed for the New York Times being forced to perform a love scene with Ashley Judd for the film Frida against her will. The producer who forced her? Why, Harvey Weinstein, of course.
This story was originally published on August 1, 2018; additional reporting was added.