During an interview for The Lost Boys podcast, Evangeline Lilly said she felt pressured to do partially nude scenes in Seasons 3 and 4 on the hit ABC drama Lost, on which she played Kate.
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“In Season 3, I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt had no choice in the matter,” Lilly said, adding that she felt "mortified."
"I was trembling when it finished," she said. "I was crying my eyes out."
But the problem of filming an undressing scene came up again for Lilly in Season 4.
"I fought very hard to have that scene be under my control. And I failed to control it again," Lilly said.
After filming that scene, she said she told writers and producers, "'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.”
Lilly, who recently starred in Ant-Man and the Wasp, said she has now been working long enough that she can say no to nudity — and not because there is anything wrong with it. She just doesn't trust she can be "comfortable and safe."
Lilly said she is more concerned for actors who are not in a position to say no. "I’m lucky; I’m in a privileged position because I can be picky. I feel for women who are struggling to come up in the industry and don’t know how to navigate that."
Lilly added that she felt the arc of Kate on the show robbed her of her autonomy by putting her in a love triangle between Jack (Matthew Fox) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway).
"I felt like my character went from being autonomous, really having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas, to chasing men around the island. And that irritated the shit out of me,” the actor said. “I did throw scripts across rooms when I read them because I would get very frustrated by the diminishing amount of her own story that there was to play.”
ABC had no comment on Lilly's story, but in a statement to BuzzFeed News, Lost executive producers JJ Abrams, Jack Bender, Carlton Cuse, and Damon Lindelof apologized for Lilly's experience on the show.
"Our response to Evie’s comments this morning in the media was to immediately reach out to her to profoundly apologize for the experience she detailed while working on Lost," they said. "We have not yet connected with her, but remain deeply and sincerely sorry. No person should ever feel unsafe at work. Period."
BuzzFeed News has reached out to Lilly's representatives for comment.