“Melrose Place” star Courtney Thorne-Smith fought against wearing sexy lingerie in movie at 17: 'They just trapped me'
A producer told her the crew was talking about her "being a baby" because of her no-nudity stance.
Courtney-Thorne Smith recalled an early — and awful — experience on a movie set in which the production tried to pull fast one with her costume.
"One of my first movies, I was 17 years old, and I was in Tahoe. And the storyline was, I was 17, and I was playing against this guy who was in his late thirties," Thorne-Smith said on the latest episode of podcast Still the Place, which she hosts with her former Melrose Place costars Daphne Zuniga and Laura Leighton. "We did sleep together in the script, and I wore his, one of his button-down shirts afterwards."
When she got to set, though, the teen actress found "a really sexy negligee" in her room. She told the director that the lingerie was not in the script and that she had a no-nudity clause in her contract, but to no avail. "They just trapped me," Thorne-Smith recalled.
When she refused to wear the lingerie, a producer told Thorne-Smith the crew was talking about her "being a baby."
She called her agent, who showed up on the set to support her. That's something she thought about decades later when she heard stories of women saying their agents set them up for meetings with powerful men in hotel rooms.
"I also had this mindset of, I'm 17 with an [older] man," explained Thorne-Smith, who went on to play Alison Parker on the Aaron Spelling drama from 1992 to 1997. "Like, I knew it was kind of off, but the shirt made it feel all right."
Production was "furious," the actress said, but she ended up wearing a men's shirt in the scene, as scripted.
Thorne-Smith noted that members of the crew later congratulated her on what she had done.
Related: Jennie Garth regrets starring in the CW's 90210 reboot: 'I didn't know how to say no'
"I'm so grateful I had that ability to stand up for myself at that age," she said. "I'm amazed, actually. I had that ability at that age."
Also known for her work in sitcom According to Jim and dramedy Ally McBeal, Thorne-Smith earned her earliest movie credits in 1986 in the cult classic Lucas, which also featured Winona Ryder, Charlie Sheen, and the late Corey Haim, and the dramedy Welcome to 18, about four girlfriends working at a dude ranch and in which Mariska Hargitay was a costar.
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