“In season three, I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt I had no choice in the matter,” she told The Lost Boys podcast. “And I was mortified and I was trembling when it finished. I was crying my eyes out, and I had to go and do a very formidable, very strong scene thereafter.”
Lilly was then asked to film a similar scene in the next season of the show, but again felt it was out of her control. “In season four, another scene came up where Kate was undressing and I fought very hard to have that scene be under my control. And I failed to control it again,” she revealed.
“So I then said, ‘That’s it, no more. You can write whatever you want — I won’t do it. I will never take my clothes off on this show again.’ And I didn’t.”
The Hobbit star then explained how she hasn't filmed another scene involving nudity since her time on Lost.
“I’ve been doing this now for 15 years. I’m a little bit better equipped now to know the ropes, to not have uncomfortable positions come up now,” she said. “Because I have had uncomfortable experiences, when I read scripts where it involves nudity, I pass."
She added: “And it’s not because I think there’s anything wrong with doing nudity. It’s because I don’t trust that I can be comfortable and safe. I’m lucky; I’m in a privileged position because I can be picky. I feel for women who are struggling to come up in the industry and don’t know how to navigate that.”
During the podcast, Lilly also voiced the frustration she felt after her Lost character was transformed from an “icon for strength and autonomy for women” to a girl trapped in a love triangle between Jack (Matthew Fox) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway).
“I felt like my character went from being autonomous, really having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas, to chasing men around the island. And that irritated the s*** out of me,” she explained.
“I did throw scripts across rooms when I read them because I would get very frustrated by the diminishing amount of her own story that there was to play.”
Ant-Man and the Wasp is in UK cinemas now
