Jesse Williams has opened up about struggling with “shrinkage” during his infamous Broadway nude scenes.
The former Grey’s Anatomy actor stars as mixed-race baseball player Darren Lemming in the Broadway revival of Take Me Out, who comes out as gay and is confronted off the field by deep-rooted, homophobic and racist prejudices.
The play’s second act showcases a fully nude Williams as he’s taking a shower in the locker room.
Speaking at Variety’s recent Business of Broadway breakfast, the cast was asked about the thought that went into staging the shower scenes.
“We had to figure out how the showers are going to operate, how to realistically utilise what’s around you, but not look like you’re doing all this just to hide,” Williams answered.
He further addressed working through his own “fear” about going fully nude and questioning whether or not it just felt “gratuitous”.
“It’s written that way because the audience needs to be confronted with what we’re confronted with. That is the whole point,” he explained. “We have to look at each other’s d***s every day. We have to be naked every day. As an audience, you have to decide whether to look up or down.”
Other co-stars jumped in to quip that it took a while for the production to adjust the shower’s water temperature so that it was “not freezing cold”.
“That’s true. That was an issue. [The water] has to get pushed through the pipes. When it first comes out, it’s not friendly,” Williams added. “You’ve all seen Seinfeld… shrinkage.”
Earlier this year, the actor fell victim to unauthorised footage of his nude scene getting leaked on the internet, prompting outrage from producers and other actors.
Afterwards, Williams responded, saying: “It’s a body, once you see it, you realise it’s whatever, it’s a boy!”
“I just have to make it not that big of a deal.”
Following the incident, the theatre installed an infrared camera system to detect illicit smartphone usage.
