Speaking of the brief nude scene in the 1968 “Romeo and Juliet,” movie directed by Franco Zeffirelli, as recently as in 2018 Olivia Hussey stated, “If you see it, the reality is these two young kids married against their parents’ wishes and have this one night together and then they die… And it wasn’t really banned in any country… And we shot it at the very end of the film. So by that time… we’ve all become a big family… It wasn’t that big of a deal. And Leonard wasn’t shy at all! In the middle of shooting, I just completely forgot I didn’t have clothes on”.
Yet now, 55 years after that movie became an international blockbuster and made Hussey’s career, she and Leonard Whiting, who played Romeo, have sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million over that nude scene, new court documents show.
Hussey, then 15 and now 71, and Whiting, then 16 now 72, filed the suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court Friday, Dec. 30, 2022, alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud after the nude scene was included in the film, despite alleged reassurance from Director Franco Zeffirelli that nudity would not be shown.
Zeffirelli, who died in 2019, allegedly told the two young actors that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in the bedroom scene and would use camera angles to obscure the nudity, the suit alleges. According to the suit, the scene was shot on the final days of filming and ignored those previous assurances.
Yet the two stars also said that Zeffirelli had informed them that they must act in the nude “or the Picture would fail,” the suit said. He also suggested their careers would be hurt, it added. So, the actors “believed they had no choice but to act in the nude in body makeup as demanded”. Now however, Whiting, and Hussey, despite the conversation they reportedly had with Zeffirelli, claim that they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge.
“What they were told and what went on were two different things,” said Tony Marinozzi, a business manager for both actors, according to Variety. “They trusted Franco. At 16, as actors, they took his lead that he would not violate that trust they had. Franco was their friend, and frankly, at 16, what do they do? There are no options. There was no #MeToo.
In the lawsuit, Hussey and Whiting said they suffered emotional damage and mental anguish for decades and also that their careers did not reflect the success of the movie.
As late as 2018, Hussey described the controversial scene as “very taboo” in America but added that, “it was done very tastefully… And in Europe, it was very different…in Europe a lot of the films had nudity. Nobody really thought much of it. But it was just the fact that I was 16 that got a lot of publicity… The large crew we worked with was whittled down to only the very basic people, a handful of people. It was done later in the day when it wasn’t busy. It was a closed set.” Despite being unclothed, Hussey described being at ease on set.
Fifty-five years later, the actors are seeking damages of more than $500 million.
