Broadway actress slams fan who took photo of her during nude scene

By Emily Mee, news reporter

A Broadway actress has criticised an audience member after they took a photograph of her during a nude scene.

Audra McDonald, who is starring in a production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, tweeted: “To whoever it was in the audience that took a flash photo during our nude scene today: Not cool. Not cool at all.”

The actress stars alongside Michael Shannon and performs scenes with him which include simulated sex and full-frontal nudity.

In an interview with The New York Times before the show’s opening night, McDonald revealed she felt nervous about the scenes.

“Maybe strippers get real used to it,” she said. “But for me there’s nothing normal about that.

“So there’s nowhere in my mind that I can drift off and let this just kind of happen, because everything about it is demanding that you be present.”

A representative for New York’s Broadhurst Theatre told Page Six they operate a “no-photo policy” and said “if someone is spotted taking a picture or video, an usher or house management staff member will ask them to erase the photos/videos… [and] asked to show their ‘deleted’ folder and empty it so there is no record of it still on the phone.

“If they refuse to hand over their camera, they are asked to leave.”

The photographer has not been identified yet.

The show’s producers had hired an intimacy co-ordinator to help the actors navigate the sex scenes.

McDonald is a six-time Tony Award-winning actress and has appeared in Grey’s Anatomy and The Good Fight, as well as films including 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, and Ricki and the Flash.

The issue of photographs being taken during nude scenes has come up before.

Nude photographs of Anna Friel circulated online while she was starring as Holly Golightly in a West End production of Breakfast of Tiffany’s in 2009.

Kathleen Turner, who featured in nude scenes in a production of The Graduate, also had photographs taken of her when the play opened in the West End.