Amanda Seyfried has passed on a TV show since it involved lots of sex scenes, saying that she is not interested in “being naked with a stranger.”
The 40-year-old said this during a conversation with Alec Baldwin at the Hamptons International Film Festival in East Hampton, NY, as reported by People on October 4. She didn’t name the show.
“I passed on a show where I would have to have sex all the time because of the sex,” Seyfried said, adding that it wouldn’t matter who the scene partner would be. “I don’t wanna do it. I’m uncomfortable with it. I’m not into it right now.”
However, she left some room for maneuvering: “Maybe if another opportunity were to come along, I would be in a different space. But I don’t wanna deal with being naked with a stranger.”
The actress pointed out that her attitude to these intimate scenes has changed with age. “Our jobs are weird,” Seyfried said. “And as I get older, it gets weirder. We have to be romantic with people that we’re not romantic with.”
She added that sometimes kissing a scene partner feels like a perk of her job. “Sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it’s really uncomfortable,” Seyfried explained, adding, “But I can’t believe back in the day I was just like, ‘We gotta make out. Great!'”
Motherhood made her even less willing to set boundaries. She and her co-star Thomas Sadoski have children Nina, 9, and Thomas Jr., 6. In September, the actors made a joint statement announcing their separation and saying that they had been apart “for a while.”
“I have kids now who are paying attention to what I do,” Seyfried said. “And so I have to be less of a pushover.”
She shared how she refused a stranger’s photo request while walking with her daughter in Manhattan, then asked Nina if she was okay. Her daughter said, “I’m very proud of you, mama.” It happened to Seyfried before: she was with her kids at a coffee shop, and the only rule she needed to stick to became clear: “If I’m with my kids, I say no.”
The actress has shared in earlier interviews that she was pressed at the beginning of her career. In a 2022 conversation with Porter magazine, Seyfried admitted that when she was 19, she didn’t wear underwear on set since “I didn’t want to upset anybody, and I wanted to keep my job.” Seyfried also pointed out that she hoped there were more intimacy coordinators on sets when she first started her acting career.
Seyfried, born in Pennsylvania, became famous as Karen Smith in Mean Girls (2004) and starred in Mamma Mia! and Les Misérables. She earned an Oscar nomination for Mank, and received an Emmy and Golden Globe for playing Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout on Hulu. Earlier this year, Seyfried got two Golden Globes nominations for The Testament of Ann Lee and the limited series Long Bright River.
At the Hamptons film festival, Seyfried was talking about The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, the drama written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, which debuted a month ago at the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie, based on real events, tells the story of Seyfried, who plays a teacher in an abusive marriage, taking a job leading creative writing classes in a penitentiary in Oklahoma and getting into a relationship with an inmate who Scoot McNairy plays. The film hasn’t been dated yet.
Seyfried didn’t say whether the series she turned down moved forward with another actor.
