While promoting her female-helmed movie Forbidden Fruits, Lili Reinhart recalled a toxic set she experienced with a male director.
The Riverdale alum opened up about the moment when asked “one acting note that you took personally” during a video with her co-stars Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp and Lola Tung.
“Oh, yeah,” said Reinhart in the Cosmopolitan video. “When I had a male director come up to me and silently lean over and go, ‘Just suck in your stomach a little bit.’
Reinhart wouldn’t reveal the name of the director, despite her co-stars egging her on. “Tell you later,” she teased them.
In Meredith Alloway’s Forbidden Fruits, Reinhart stars as Apple, the leader of a witchy femme cult that operates out of the upscale mall store Free Eden. With Apple, Cherry (Pedretti) and Fig (Shipp) looking to complete their coven, they take in Pumpkin (Tung), only to discover a snake in their garden.
While stopping by Deadline’s SXSW Studio last month, Reinhart discussed how empowered she felt working on a female-centric set.
“It was ultimate collaboration, which is so nice, because sometimes that’s really not the case, and it’s like, ‘This is what you’re wearing,’” explained Reinhart. “For Apple, it’s a lot of black and tight, but it’s not for the male gaze. It’s for herself. And I think you can see the difference … it’s not to say ‘look at me,’ it’s to say ‘stay the f*ck away from me’ in a way, which I think is great.”
