‘True Detective’ Actress Reportedly Was Fired After Cary Fukunaga Tried to Coerce Her Into Appearing Nude Against Her Contract

Cary Joji Fukunaga, the director of the most recent James Bond flick No Time to Die, reportedly once demanded a young actress to appear topless against her will in an episode of True Detective, a new report from The Daily Beast says. Raeden Greer, who was cast in a speaking role on the show when she was 24, says that she signed onto the buzzy HBO show under the clause that there would be no nudity involved. After she refused to appear nude, however, she was fired from the series.

When she received the script, Greer noticed that her small role involved a bit of dancing. A little wary, understanding that stars like Alexandra Daddario had appeared nude on the show before, Greer made sure she wouldn’t have to perform naked.

“So, I started asking after that, like, ‘To be clear, there’s no nudity involved in this role, right?’” Greer recalls. “I kept getting the answer from my agent and from casting—no, that would be absolutely unheard of if they asked you to do nudity after it wasn’t disclosed. There was no rider, there was no negotiating this into your contract, that would not happen, so stop asking about it because it’s making you look amateurish.’ So, I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna quit worrying about it.’”

But on the day of filming in March 2013, Greer says she arrived at her trailer to find nothing but a set of pasties and a nude thong laid out for her to wear. After she asked a PA to get someone as she was “extremely uncomfortable” about her costume situation, Fukunaga and another producer pulled her aside to chat — and Fukunaga immediately laid into the actress.

“Cary said to me at that moment, ‘Everybody on this show goes topless. All the women on the show go topless. Your character is a stripper, so you have to,’” Greer said.

Even though Greer eventually put her foot down, Fukunaga was insistent on her appearing topless on the show, continuously attempting to manipulate her into changing her mind.

“He was trying different things to convince me that it’s not a big deal,” she said. “It [was] going to be very tasteful, or it’s just gonna be really insignificant in the background. I was like, ‘Well, if it’s so insignificant, why is he so insistent that I have to do this?’ It was just on and on and on with no budging.”

After heading back to her trailer, another producer showed up hours later to let her know they had found someone else to take her role. She was fired from the show.

“It was disheartening. It felt bad,” says Greer, who went on to small acting roles in American Horror Story and Magic Mike XXL. “You can’t just treat people like all you are is a pair of tits, that is very hurtful.”

As he promotes his new Bond flick No Time To Die, Fukunaga has been open about his new idea of a more feminist point of view to the franchise. He explained that he hired Phoebe Waller-Bridge to help ensure the movie’s “female characters [are] more than just contrivances.”

“And now, Cary is out here talking about his female characters—it’s like another slap in the face over and over and over,” Greer said of Fukunaga’s shift. “Yes, he has had an illustrious career—that was a star-maker for him, and what happened to me? Nobody cares.”

Greer went on to say that what was most shameful is the fact that Fukunaga would try to take advantage of a young actress trying to begin her career.

“That was the human element that was missing that is so hurtful to me, that you could just look at somebody—a young girl who is starting out in her career who doesn’t want to show everything she’s got naked on camera spur of the moment, and you can’t understand that?” Greer said. “He knew that he wasn’t doing [it] above board. He knew.”