Myleene Klass has revealed how a famous director told her to strip during an audition.
The 43-year-old former Hear’Say star said she had been studying at music college when she was invited to the home of a “very well known, well respected director” who asked her to take off her dress, while his wife bathed the couple’s children.
The singer, a classically trained musician, chose not to name the director but said he asked her to take off her jacket as the pair role-played while reading lines.
She said: “I thought I was really safe. I took off my imaginary jacket and handed it to him, then he broke character and said, ‘there’s nothing in my hand’.
“That’s when, as any woman will know, you go ice cold. I took off my jacket and handed it to him. He said: ‘Thank you. Now take off your dress.’ And I went well, whoa, whoa, whoa! I could see his wife bathing the kids.”
But Myleene – who studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Royal Academy of Music before joining Hear’Say in 2001 – said it was one of “many” bad experiences.
She continued: “Another guy said: ‘You can’t be Asian with t****** like that.’ He said: ‘Come here and dance.’ I looked for the exit again.”
Myleene now feels she can speak up about the harassment she has endured.
She told the Dirty Mother Pukka podcast: “I make a very loud noise about it because you will not put me in a position where my daughters will have to follow suit or any other woman who can’t speak up for herself.
“It’s the guy that gets up a little too closely behind you as you’re trying to play your piano piece. As a woman, you just know.”
Myleene is mum to Ava, 14, and Hero, 10, from her previous marriage to Graham Quinn and a two-year-old son, Apollo, with fiance Simon Motson.
She said: “I have a voice and I’m teaching my children to use their voice. No means no – if it feels uncomfortable, it’s wrong.”
It has previously been reported that disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, now a convicted sex offender, offered Myleene a sex contract. She said he had a PA, security guards and others around him who she described as “enablers”.
