An actor was embarrassed and horrified after Noel Clarke pressed her into an “exposing and vulnerable position” in a film scene and then shared the footage with others on set, the high court has heard.
Mila (not her real name), the seventh of Guardian News and Media’s (GNM’s) oral witnesses to Clarke’s defamation claim against the publisher, said the former Doctor Who star directed her to bend over in a nude scene until her genitalia could be seen.
In her witness statement, she said: “Noel was sitting behind the camera, behind my bottom, and the crew were mostly standing behind me, too. I was acutely conscious of this and so tried to take the knickers off without bending over too much. By this point, I was expecting to show my naked body upright – being bent over in such an exposing and vulnerable position had never been discussed. Noel was telling me to bend over, repeating things like “bend over further, come on” and “do it properly”…
“He repeated these comments until I bent over further and further until I was bent completely over with my bum in the air. From this position, my vulva would have been visible to him personally and I presume at close range on camera. I felt humiliated and totally powerless.”
Mila said she felt “hugely embarrassed, blindsided and shell shocked” and those feelings were amplified when she became aware that Clarke had been watching rushes of the scene and allowing others to as well.
“One day, I was in the back of a car being driven on to set by a driver/runner who had not been on set for the filming of the stripping scene, and he made a jokey comment to me about the scene, referring to it as something along the lines of ‘saucy’, and it inferred that he had seen it,” she told the court.
“My stomach dropped and I felt incredibly embarrassed, and I was horrified to think that Noel had captured those angles and was allowing other people to watch them without my consent.”
Philip Williams, representing Clarke, who is suing over Guardian publications from 2021-22 alleging sexual misconduct, suggested that Mila was embellishing what had happened.
He suggested that if events had happened as she described she would have subsequently “avoided nudity and sex scenes like the plague”.
Mila replied: “As an actress, you would be turning down a lot of work if you were not prepared to do any nudity at all.” She added that the other productions had not involved full-frontal nudity.
The court also heard from actors Charles Cattrall and Samuel Phillips who said Mila had told them about her negative experiences with Clarke not long after the shoot.
Cattrall said in his witness statement that it sounded as if actors were “put in a position where they did not feel they could object” and “she also told me … that she believed Clarke was sharing rushes with various people on set: at least one driver and other male crew.”
Phillips said in his witness statement: “She [Mila] told me Clarke required her to get fully naked and he positioned his monitor right behind her where she had to bend down when naked.”
The final witness on Thursday, Marc Small, claimed in his witness statement that Davie Fairbanks, with whom he wrote and directed Legacy, told him that Clarke, the film’s producer, had recorded nude auditions without actors’ knowledge.
Williams put it to Small that he “had an axe to grind” because he and Fairbanks were involved in a business dispute with Clarke over the origins of the Sky show Bulletproof, which Clarke starred in with Ashley Walters.
Small replied: “That is absolutely incorrect. I can’t say I was happy with Mr Clarke if he has adapted some of my work but I don’t relentlessly think about it.”
Source: theguardian.com
