Actress Minnie Driver said she “knew it was wrong” when “a bunch of pervy execs” allegedly told her to “fake an orgasm” during an audition, but she did it anyway.
In an excerpt from the 52-year-old’s new memoir, “Managing Expectations,” the “Good Will Hunting” actress talked about the early days of her career and recalled being asked to replicate the famed scene from “When Harry Met Sally,” when actress Meg Ryan’s character faked an orgasm while in a cafe, reported E! News.
The request was for a role in an advertisement for a chocolate product.
“You’ve seen the movie When Harry Met Sally?” Driver wrote in the book about what the director said to her. “You know the scene where she fakes an orgasm? OK. Eat a piece of chocolate and do that.”
“Fake an orgasm?” the superstar actress asked.
“Yes,” the executive replied, she wrote. “Unless you fancy having a real one.”
The actress was labelled ‘difficult’ early in her career because she spoke out against sexism and abuse. Now she’s considered a trailblazer https://t.co/C1m90BIJ3Y
— The Times (@thetimes) May 7, 2022
The “Return to Me” star said she was asked to do it more than once, the first time “normally” and then again in a “bigger” way for a Dutch market.
The actress explained how she just wanted to get out of there and warn the actresses outside that the audition was basically “vying for an opportunity that was actually humiliation dressed up in a pick-me! outfit.”
“I wanted to tell them we were better than this, better than being lunchtime entertainment for a bunch of pervy execs, their perviness sanctioned by this being considered ‘work,'” Driver shared.
She said she did end up doing it once. But when she told them she wasn’t sure about being able to do it again she was allegedly told, “Course you can, love, that’s the best bit about being a girl!”
When she made it clear she wouldn’t do it again or “will throw up,” the actress wrote that the director “sneered,” “rolled his eyes,” and told her, “Well, all the other girls have apparently very much enjoyed this.”
Driver grabbed her coat and left the audition, telling the execs, “They were faking it.”
She wrote that when she got home there was a message on her answering machine indicating she had been labeled “difficult” at the tryout.
“I knew I’d now been marked,” Driver wrote. “Branded with a scarlet D that often comes with saying ‘no’ as an actress.”
In 2018, the “Circle of Friends” star also talked about what she called the #MeToo world she grew up in when she tried out for the part in the chocolate bar commercial.
“I f***ing did it,” Driver shared at the time. “I knew it was wrong, and I still did it. I was embarrassed and mortified, and I didn’t understand it until years later. That feeling didn’t leave me for a long time.”
“And to this day, I wish someone in that room had stood up and said, ‘This is outrageous,’ because these guys were getting their jollies off, watching woman after woman pretend to have an orgasm,” she added. “I don’t think it would happen today, thank goodness, which is some kind of progress.”