Jameela Jamil Says She Quit ‘You’ Audition Over Sex Scenes

The Good Place alum Jameela Jamil could have been in the fourth season of Netflix‘s You but pulled out of auditioning for a role because she didn’t want to do sex scenes.

Jamil revealed the news during her appearance on Podcrushed, the podcast series hosted by You star Penn Badgley, alongside his co-hosts Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari. The She-Hulk actress opened up about not feeling “sexy” and why she doesn’t do sex scenes.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been someone who would have enjoyed objectifying myself, personally. But that’s also because I have so much deep, like, childhood sexual trauma stuff. So I think that was never in the cards for me,” she said (per Screenrant). “You know, I still wear the little skirt or the busty top, but like, occasionally. But generally, I feel quite protective of myself in that way. Like, I don’t do sex scenes.”

Jamil went on to say she was supposed to co-star with Badgley in the latest season of You. “In fact, I was supposed to audition for the most recent season of your show,” she revealed. “My character was supposed to be quite sexy, and I pulled out of the audition because I am so shy about anything sexy that I can’t.”

“And then you f*****g came out and was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not doing sex scenes anymore.’ And I was like… I didn’t even know that was a boundary that we could draw,” she continued. “But then I was like, I should have gone and done the f*****g show.”

Jamil was referring to how Badgley asked You‘s creator Sera Gamble to reduce his sex scenes for Season 4, noting his real-life marriage as part of his decision.

“Fidelity in every relationship, including my marriage, is important to me,” he said in a previous episode of Podcrushed. “It’s got to the point where I don’t want to do [sex scenes]. So I said to Sera, ‘My desire would be zero, to go from 100 to zero.’ But I signed this contract. I signed up for this show. I know what I did. You can’t take this aspect out of the DNA of the concept. So how much less can you make it, was my question to them.”

Badgely said that Gamble was open to his request, saying, “She was sort of almost; I want to say empowered. It had a really positive response. They came back with a phenomenal reduction.”

Jamil most recently played Mary MacPherran/Titania in Disney+’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Gisela in Peacock’s Pitch Perfect spinoff series Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin. She also made a guest appearance in Peacock’s Poker Face.

You, Season 4, Streaming Now, Netflix