Actress Mckenna Grace, 20, says she will not do nudity or what she calls “hypersexual” roles, drawing a personal boundary that stands out in an industry rarely known for restraint.
In an interview with Cosmopolitan, Grace was asked whether there were roles she’d turn down. “At this point, I definitely don’t do nudity or very hypersexual things,” she said. “I respect anybody who can, but it’s terrifying to me. I don’t know if that’ll ever change.”
Grace, who began acting as a child and has appeared in the “Ghostbusters” films, “Scream 7” and Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — earning an Emmy nomination for the latter — is set to appear next in the “Hunger Games” prequel “Sunrise on the Reaping.”
She made clear the boundary isn’t about chasing squeaky-clean typecasting. “It’s not like I only do wholesome things — my character literally gets gutted by Ghostface in ‘Scream’ but my dream is to try and be a Disney princess someday,” she said.
After the interview circulated, Grace took to Instagram to separate the two points. “The two quotes being used right now in these titles are unrelated,” she wrote. “I’m not uncomfortable doing nude scenes/hypersexual roles simply because ‘I want to be a Disney princess,’ it’s just because of my own personal comfortability I have with that sort of thing right now at this point in my life!”
Entertainment critic Christian Toto, host of “The Hollywood in Toto Podcast,” told Fox News Digital that Grace’s family-friendly start may explain her stance. “Mckenna got her showbiz start on family-friendly shows like ‘Crash & Bernstein.’ Perhaps some of those lessons have stuck,” Toto said. “Or, she’s seen former child stars go the hyper-sexual route and wants no part of it. Either way, her instincts here are solid, and she may just carve a healthy lane for her Hollywood career moving forward.”
A Broader Pattern of Pushback
Grace joins a short but growing list of performers who have set their own limits in an industry that often assumes none exist. Actress Amy Adams has said she turned down a sexually explicit “Saturday Night Live” sketch proposed by Andy Samberg after starring as Giselle in Disney’s “Enchanted,” telling Seth Meyers she was “so keenly aware of all the young girls that were watching ‘Enchanted'” and didn’t want to be “the princess singing about that particular act.”
“You” star Penn Badgley has spoken about asking to reduce intimate scenes, citing his marriage. Veteran actor Neal McDonough has long declined sex scenes or on-screen kissing outside his marriage, citing his Catholic faith.
Utah Studio Codifies the Standard
The individual choices of actors like Grace are now being matched by institutional ones. Angel Studios, based in Utah, has announced “The Angel Promise,” a formal content standard barring on-screen sex, nudity and gratuitous profanity from its original releases.
Jeff Harmon, the studio’s co-founder and chief content officer, told Fox News Digital that Hollywood has drifted from the audience it once served. “I think Hollywood generally kind of lives in a bubble,” Harmon said. “These are excellent craftsmen. They’re the best storytellers in the world. Hollywood has built the best storytelling infrastructure in the world. But at the same time, they’ve kind of drifted more and more away from the values-based audience that they used to serve.”
Harmon added that as “brothers and as fathers,” Hollywood’s current output doesn’t consistently meet what families are looking for. “Once in a while, you get a good one, but you have to sift through all these things to find your good movies and your good stories,” he said. He described the studio’s pledge as a guarantee that families won’t stumble onto graphic material, calling it an attempt to step out of the “Hollywood bubble” and into “middle America’s shoes.”
For a readership wary of cultural institutions dictating what entertainment should look like, the Grace interview and the Utah studio’s pledge point the same direction: individuals and companies setting their own standards, rather than having one set for them, and letting audiences choose accordingly.
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