Emily Deschanel is recounting a troubling experience on set during one of her first acting jobs — when an actor put his hand on her butt and sniffed her hair.
Speaking to her Bones costar Carla Gallo on their rewatch podcast Boneheads, Deschanel said, “One of my first jobs … As they said, ‘Rolling,’ the actor was behind me. He just put his hand on my ass.”
“And I was so scared, even though I’d been on sets before in my life because my family works on them,” Deschanel said. Her father, Caleb Deschanel is a cinematographer. Both her mother, Mary Jo Deschanel and her sister, Zooey Deschanel, are actresses.
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Emily Deschanel, Bones
She continued: “This is my first time as, like, a real acting job. And, like, I was on camera, and I was so nervous first day, and he just put his hand on my butt, and I just was like, ‘Just continue with the scene’ … this was very early on in my career where I thought that hammer was on me at all times, you know?”
Asked by Gallo if the actor’s hand placement made sense in the scene, Deschanel responded, “Oh, no, no. And the camera couldn’t see it. It was like his little power play to me.”
“And then on the next take, I didn’t say anything because I was, like, frozen in fear, 23 years old or whatever. I did not have that kind of confidence,” she said. “And then he sniffed my hair in a really creepy way, and he kept doing things like that for the whole scene.”
Deschanel added: “But I was so proud of myself after the scene, and yet I’m like, I shouldn’t — this is not on me … I turned around, and I said, ‘Don’t you ever do that again.’ And he didn’t. And what’s weird is, we became kind of friends.”
“It’s a very complicated thing. It was because my friend became friends with him, then I became friends with him, but, you know, it’s I think a thing of like an abuser, and I don’t mean to use this word lightly because it’s like, this is minor abuse, and people experience much worse things in life. But I think there’s a psychological thing where you want to normalize it for them. Like, even if you’re the victim of it, you’re like, ‘No. That’s fine,’ ” she added.
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