Actors’ Equity Blasts Person Who Leaked Jesse Williams’ Nude Broadway Scene, Calls it Sexual Harassment

Actors’ Equity Association denounced the audience member who filmed, then leaked the nude scene of Jesse Williams on stage during a Broadway play.

Williams stars as a gay baseball player in the Richard Greenberg play ‘Take Me Out.’ He goes “full-frontal” nude during a scene.

AEA says, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms the creation and distribution of photographs and videos of our members during a nude scene,” said Kate Shindle, president of Actors’ Equity Association. “As actors, we regularly agree to be vulnerable on stage in order to tell difficult and challenging stories. This does not mean that we agree to have those vulnerable moments widely shared by anyone who feels like sneaking a recording device into the theater.”

The statement addresses that Williams was filmed without the other actors’ consent. It also condemns the audience member for violating the theater’s rules of recording and distributing the film. 

“At every performance, there is a mutual understanding between the audience and the performers that we are sharing an experience limited to this time and place; that trust makes it possible for us to be exposed both emotionally and physically,” the statement continued, labeling the act as “both sexual harassment and an appalling breach of consent.” 

The NYC theatre even released a statement about the “phone-free” policy and how “appalled” they were. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Second Stage Theater (2ST) (@2stnyc)

So far, the video has been removed from Twitter, but pictures remain.