Jennifer Lawrence says she confronted crew members who were not approved to be present during a nude scene, saying she wanted to ensure that young actresses would feel safe speaking up in similar situations. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Oscar-winning actress recalled the incident during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she spoke about the importance of having clear rules while filming intimate scenes. Lawrence said she became upset after noticing that crew members who had not been approved to attend were present while she was filming a nude scene. She said she spoke up because she was concerned about how a young actress might handle a similar situation.
“There was like an instance on set where crewmembers who weren’t approved when I was doing nudity, they were on set,” Lawrence recalled to Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper. “And I came down hard on it purely because if we’re not setting that kind of principle at the level at which we’re doing it right now, then what on earth is going to happen to an 18-year-old unknown?” The Hunger Games star explained that an inexperienced actress might find it difficult to object to such a situation out of fear of being labelled difficult to work with.
Lawrence continued: “If a young actress shows up and there’s people that aren’t approved, she’s going to be in a position like, ‘Do I say something and get a reputation for being difficult? Or do I just let these people that I’m not comfortable with see me naked?'” She said she wanted the people on set to understand why allowing unauthorised crew members during such scenes was unacceptable. “So it was important to me to explain that to the people why that was not OK,” she said.
Her account is similar to an incident recalled by actress Esme Bianco, who appeared in the popular series Game of Thrones. Bianco had earlier spoken about finding unauthorised crew members present while she was filming a nude scene during the show’s first season. In the book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, Bianco recalled that the scene was supposed to be filmed on a closed set. However, she noticed three men holding a flag over a light while she was naked. “It was supposed to be a closed set,” she recalled in the book Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon, as per The Hollywood Reporter. “I look behind me and there’s three guys all holding one flag over a light. I’m buck na**d.” Bianco also said she questioned why so many people were needed for the task and asked them to leave the set.
The conversation comes as Lawrence has also confirmed her return as Katniss Everdeen in the upcoming The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. She is set to reunite with her former co-stars Josh Hutcherson and Woody Harrelson. The two strands of her recent public commentary, one about protecting performers on set and the other about returning to the franchise that made her a star, sit together in an interesting way. Lawrence has spoken in the past about the pressures of sudden fame and the ways the industry can leave young performers exposed, and her willingness to describe a specific incident rather than speak in generalities gives the account a concreteness that generic statements about safety on set often lack.
What makes these accounts worth taking seriously is the structural problem they describe. Closed sets are a standard practice precisely because they create a clear boundary between the work and the people watching it, and when that boundary is not enforced, the burden of enforcing it falls on the performer, who may be the least empowered person in the room. Both Lawrence and Bianco describe a moment of decision, a calculation about whether speaking up was worth the professional risk, and both chose to speak. Not everyone in that position does, which is why the question of how protections are actually enforced on set, rather than merely written into policy, remains an unresolved one across the industry.
.jpg){kind=link}