Sarah Treem, the showrunner of the Showtime series The Affair, is responding to an article that claimed she created a “hostile work environment” on set, which led to actress Ruth Wilson‘s exit from the show.
THR reported that Ruth 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 Treem.
Sarah has now written an op-ed piece for Deadline in which she reveals years of behind-the-scenes details that shed a light on what was happening on set. In the article, Sarah notes how The Affair is a show “divided into two parts, with each half being told from the very different perspective of characters involved in the same incident.” Ruth‘s character Alison was featured in many sex scenes throughout the season while we followed her affair with the character Noah. Episodes would show scenes from each character’s perspective and while the audience might view a sex scene as a rape in one perspective, the other perspective would sometimes show it was consensual.
When it came time to filming a scene for season two, Ruth “didn’t approve of the scene and didn’t want to play it as written. By this point, it wasn’t a surprise as we had been disagreeing on the character’s choices since the second episode. By now we were at this complicated impasse where I didn’t know how to write the character any differently and she didn’t feel she could play what I was writing.”
Sarah detailed the many times that Ruth didn’t agree with certain scenes and how she either would change the scene or get a body double to film them. She said, “We didn’t agree on the choices of the character or whether or not a sex scene was necessary to advance the plot, but that is not the same thing as not respecting or supporting an actress’s need to feel safe in her work environment, which is something I always take incredibly seriously.”
Click inside to read what Sarah Treem wrote about Ruth Wilson’s exit from the show… More Here! »
