Back in 2013, Aubrey Plaza starred in hit coming-of-age movie The To Do List.
Aubrey portrayed Brandy Klark, a sexually inexperienced high school student who compiles a to-do list of sexual things to try out before going off to college.
And perhaps one of the movie’s most memorably awkward scenes features Aubrey’s character pleasuring herself — an experience that the actor previously described as super “nerve-racking” to film.
But what’s worse is that Aubrey actually had no idea what the scene would entail before it came to shooting.
During a recently resurfaced appearance on Conan from 2013, Aubrey claimed that the film’s director, Maggie Carey, instructed her to touch herself in real life when they shot the scene with no prior warning.
“In my head, I envisioned a nice scene where you see my hand slowly go out of frame,” Aubrey began, revealing that the script simply stated: “Brandy masturbates.”
“I thought I was doing one thing and then when I showed up, it was a whole different thing, it was a full-body shot,” she recalled.
“The camera was mounted on the ceiling, I was in my underwear and a Clinton T-shirt, and there were a bunch of old men smoking — the crew guys,” she detailed. “And then I went and touched myself.”
When Aubrey asked Maggie about the scene, the director was allegedly very blasé about the entire thing.
“I asked the director, ‘What should I do?’ And she said, ‘Masturbate, like it says in the script,’” Aubrey claimed.
At the time, Maggie called Aubrey “brave” and “gutsy” for her performance.
“She was so brave,” Maggie told Screen Slam. “She was game for everything, you know, which was so fun.”
“And she had no problem putting herself in these very awkward situations. But, you know, it’s played for comedy and she just nailed it,” she said. “It was just so fun to work with her. She’s very gutsy.”
After Aubrey’s past comments resurfaced online last week, several internet users were left seriously disturbed by her claim.
“This would never fly in 2022. An actor being like ‘so what do I do’ and the director is like ‘go touch yourself on camera.’ Without any kind of notice or warning that this is what they want to see?” one person wrote.
“wow, this is fucked up. The fact that she could openly talk about it and the director wouldn’t get cancelled really is… that’s fucked up,” another said.
Meanwhile, other viewers went on to raise their eyebrows at the way Conan laughed the whole thing off.
“They all laugh it away, but this isn’t ok. You can’t order someone to pleasure herself for a tv show,” one user wrote. “Is this supposed to be funny… Cause for me it’s just sad,” someone else added.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/leylamohammed/aubrey-plaza-masturbate-on-camera-resurfaced-interview