Shocking allegations are coming to light about why Ruth Wilson really left the hit Showtime show The Affair after winning a Golden Globe for her work in the drama back in 2015.
Last summer, Ruth shocked everyone when she announced she was leaving the show before the fifth and final season, but could not say why. She presumably has a non disclosure agreement in place with the network.
Now, THR is revealing that she left the show due to “ongoing frustrations with the nudity required of her,” and “what she ultimately felt was a hostile work environment,’ among issues with the showrunner, Sarah Treem.
“There was a culture problem at the show from the very beginning and a tone-deafness from Sarah Treem about recognizing the position she was putting actors in,” a source said. “Over and over again, I witnessed Sarah Treem try to cajole actors to get naked even if they were uncomfortable or not contractually obligated to.”
“I would never say those things to an actor. That’s not who I am. I am not a manipulative person, and I’ve always been a feminist,” Sarah said in response to the allegations. “I have devoted my entire professional life to writing about and speaking to women’s issues, women’s causes, women’s empowerment and creating strong, complex roles for women in theater and in Hollywood, on- and offscreen. It’s what I think about, what I care about, it’s what drives my life and work. The reason I even created The Affair was to illuminate how the female experience of moving through the world is so different from the male one, it’s like speaking a second language. The idea that I would ever cultivate an unsafe environment or harass a woman on one of my shows is utterly ridiculous and lacks a grounding in reality.”
Apparently men on set would also say things to women like “Everyone is waiting for you,” or “You look beautiful…It’s things you would think would be coming out of a man’s mouth from the 1950s. The environment was very toxic.” In addition, while filming scenes that required being in the buff, “There sometimes were people there who didn’t need to be, or the monitor was in plain view.”
There were specific instances that made Ruth uncomfortable, like one sex scene that was “rapey,” said one source. When Ruth would bring up issues, she was apparently labeled as being “difficult.”
Then, an incident happened while filming in Montauk, New York that made cast members uncomfortable…and Girls‘ Lena Dunham is involved.
It all started when Lena Dunham, Girls cast members, and The Affair executive producer and director Jeffrey Reiner happened to run into each other in the Hamptons town.
Sources say that Jeffrey asked Lena if she would go to dinner with Ruth to try and get her to “show her t*ts, or at least some vag,” and then he apparently went on to “critique and crudely evaluate the bodies of all the women on his show.”
Apparently, Jeffrey also showed Lena a photo of “a mutual friend with a c*ck next to her face,” which sources say was Maura Tierney, another actress on The Affair. This encounter was all documented on Lena and Jenni Konner‘s now shuttered website Lenny Letter.
After this encounter happened and news spread about it, THR says that Ruth and Maura both “expressed discomfort about continuing to work with Reiner.” He eventually was told he could no longer direct episodes with Ruth. He ended up leaving the show after the third season, and Ruth left as well and this is the incident that she was able to use to negotiate her exit.