Jameela Jamil chatted with You star and devoted podcaster Penn Badgley and discussed why she canceled an audition for his show's fourth season.
On Badgley's podcast with co-hosts Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari, Podcrushed, Jamil revealed she decided she wasn't right for You because she didn't want to be asked to do sex scenes.
![Jameela Jamil attends NIRH Champions of Choice Awards Luncheon](https://ew.com/thmb/xrnbgkiiTEfQykV5L4GJKClW184=/1500x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/jameela-jamil-NIRH-champions-of-choice-awards-luncheon-050323-1-6c2b525d3ba2484c9da632ed8953f30b.jpg)
"I don't do sex scenes," Jamil told Badgley. "In fact, I was supposed to audition for the most recent season of your show. 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."
Jamil went on to explain that her decision is rooted in childhood sexual trauma and an unwillingness to objectify herself.
"So I think that was never in the cards for me," she added. "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."
On a bonus episode of Podcrushed from February, Badgley said he had asked You's creator Sera Gamble if he could skip out on doing anymore "intimacy scenes" in season 4 in order to prioritize his wife and family.
"This is actually a decision I had made before I took the show," he said at the time. "I don't think I had ever mentioned it publicly, but one of the main things is like, do I want to put myself back in a career path where I'm just always a romantic lead?"
When Jamil heard that, she thought maybe she should've done the show after all.
"And then you f---ing came out and were 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 recalled. "But then I was like, I should have gone and done the f---ing show."
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