Photos of Nude Scenes Imperil Trust on Broadway
Jesse Williams was nominated for a Tony Award last month for his work in “Take Me Out,” an acclaimed play about baseball and homophobia. But when his name trended on Twitter the next day, it was because someone had surreptitiously taken a video of his nude scene and posted it online.
Mr. Williams said he was undeterred. “I come here to do work — I’m going to tell the truth onstage, I’m going to be vulnerable,” he said. But, he added, “putting nonconsensual naked photos of somebody on the internet is really foul.”
The ubiquity of smartphones with ever-better cameras is leading some actors, particularly celebrities, to reconsider whether to appear nude onstage, given the risk that what is intended as an ephemeral moment can live online forever, out of context.
Nudity has grown common onstage over the past 50 years, but the chances of being photographed au naturel have grown considerably. Being Broadway royalty offers no protection: Audra McDonald, who has won six Tonys, noticed in 2019 that someone had snapped a photo of her during a nude scene from “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” “Not cool at all,” she wrote in a tweet.
The recent videos of Mr. Williams surfaced despite the steps that Second Stage Theater in New York, the producer of “Take Me Out,” has taken to protect the actors’ privacy. Audience members must switch off their phones and place them in pouches that are kept locked until the end of the show. The pouches, made by a company called Yondr, have grown increasingly common in recent years.
The theater has also installed an infrared camera so that security officials can see if any members of the audience are trying to film the nude scenes.
At a performance of the play last month, two theater staff members were stationed at the front of the theater. They stood up during scenes that included nudity. For all the precautions, a phone rang five minutes into the first act. The crowd audibly groaned.
When Mr. Williams was asked whether he would sign up again for a show in which he must appear nude, he demurred. “I don’t know,” he said. “My reaction is never as hot, or loud or miserable as everybody expects it to be.”