EW's SCAD TVFest Bold School panel guests on pushing back on onscreen nudity and bad advice they've gotten

Jaz Sinclair of "Gen V," Josie Totah of "The Buccaneers," Monica Raymund of "Hightown," and Chyler Leigh of "The Way Home" in conversation.

Once a year, EW gathers a group of daring actors at Savannah College of Art and Design's SCAD TVFest in Atlanta for our Bold School panel, a candid conversation about being a woman or non-binary in Hollywood.

This past weekend, EW's senior social media editor Jorie McDonald moderated that conversation with Jaz Sinclair of Gen V, Josie Totah of The Buccaneers, Monica Raymund of Chicago Fire and Hightown, and Chyler Leigh of Grey's Anatomy, Supergirl, and The Way Home.

The hour-long conversation covered their own personal Bold School teachers ("my mom" was a popular answer), the importance of gratitude but also voicing your needs on set, and the worst advice they've received.

When prompted with that latter question, Leigh opened up to the room about auditioning for a pilot when she was about 21-years-old.

"It was a show that just seemed absolutely awesome," she said. "It was an EMT paramedic situation. The character was fantastic, but in the episode there was a ton of really gratuitous sex scenes, and nude scenes that, at the time, I really was not at all comfortable doing."

Her initial audition went well, and she was called in to meet with the producer (whom she declined to name) to talk about why she did not want to do the nude scenes.

"I thought, 'Why are you asking me that question? If I said no, I mean no.'... And she said to me, 'Listen, I don't know why you would have a problem with this. You're young, you want to get into this show. It's amazing. We've got so much going on, and it's not like we're seeing you naked. We're seeing your character naked.' And I was like, That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard."

"But I was so young and I was like, at that point..." Leigh continued before realizing it might sound to the audience of like she conceded. "I didn't do it! I said, no. But it just made me think, 'My God, the fact that that happens so often in our industry, and you can get pressured and pushed into doing things that you're wildly uncomfortable with, and you're scared to say no because you don't want to be outcast, or you don't want to be known as the person who says no, and you should be grateful for these opportunities.'"

Leigh says she was never seen for a project by that producer again "because I used a lot of expletives on that phone call."

"When people are pressuring you like that, make sure you have people around you who support you, and don't be afraid to say no," she concluded to the SCAD students in the room. "I know that is easier said than done, but really, 'no' in your vocabulary in this industry is probably the most powerful word that you can use."

"I really think that that's so important, especially for young women to hear," added Sinclair, seen above in the full video of this portion of the panel. "I think, once upon a time, the narrative was 'If you want to do it, you have to just get naked when people say you have to get naked.' And I've had conversations with my costars, where they're telling me that they feel uncomfortable, but they haven't expressed it. Or they're scared that something's going to get written in like that, that they'll just have to do. And I just want to say: You always have autonomy over your body, and nobody can ever tell you what to do with it. Just in case you were curious, that anything that feels like that is bulls---."

From there, Totah opened up about her early years in the business.

"When I started acting, I was 10 years old, and I guest-starred on shows for the first four years of my career.... And I was recurring on one show, and I remember someone on the cast, or a few people, they would continuously tell me, 'Remember your place. You're just a guest in this space. You're not actually a main person.... Know where you stand when you come in here.'"

"And I think, over the years, I've learned my value more," she continued. "Even if I'm not saying the most lines, or in the most scenes, I have felt more stronger within myself as I've gotten older in my career, of like, 'This is what I'm worth, and this is what I'm bringing to the table, and I do have a place.' I think a lot of times we get told to just be grateful, which we should be grateful — at least I feel that way, we should be grateful — but we should also not let that invalidate our inherent value."

"Yeah, there's nothing sexier than gratitude," chimed in Raymund, who went on to share how she pushed through what could have been a demoralizing conversation in her career: "I am also a director, and somebody said to me, 'You can't do both.' And I said, 'Why?' And they're like, 'Well, you should really choose. You should choose, because people will forget about you being one or the other. If you start directing, people will forget that you're an actor, and you really want people to know that if you're a director, you got to really commit to just directing, and vice versa.' And I was like, 'Well, watch me.' I just didn't understand why they were bifurcating my space before I had even inhabited it.

"So yeah, now I do both."

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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.