Shailene Woodley talks being 'stuck' on 'Secret Life of the American Teenager,' disagreeing with show's message
The Secret Life of the American Teenager made Shailene Woodley famous, but it was a double-edged sword because she quickly felt trapped in the role.
“When I signed onto Secret Life, I read [scripts for three episodes] and I signed a contract for six years,” the 28-year-old actor told Bustle about the ABC Family show, which ran from 2008 to 2013.
Those three episodes “all hit home,” said Woodley, whose character Amy became pregnant at age 15. “I had friends in high school who were pregnant. It felt like everything that I wanted to be sending into the world,” she said of the show’s message.
But as the seasons went on, abstinence became the overarching message. Characters wore purity rings — not unlike real life stars Jonas Brothers did at that time — and characters were shamed for having sex.
“There were a lot of things that were written into the scripts that not just me, but a lot of the cast, disagreed with,” Woodley said. “There were belief systems that were pushed that were different than my own. Yet legally I was stuck there. To this day it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
She said the experience on the show ultimately “propelled me to be more vocal about my own belief systems.”
Woodley said goodbye to the series when it ended in 2013. By then she had already appeared in 2011’s The Descendants. The year after, she blew up in back to back films The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent.
“I lost my virginity like seven times on screen,” she told Bustle. “I lost my own virginity in a really unromantic, unsexy way, [so] it’s very therapeutic for me that by playing these characters I was showing young women what they can wait for.”
And she channeled her own past to portray her role in Big Little Lies. Her character, Jane, is a rape survivor. Woodley was nominated for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part.
“I have had very traumatic sexual experiences,” she said. “I translate[d] my personal trauma into what she was experiencing in the best way that I knew.”
Woodley said her own recovery from her own traumatic experiences included several years in an open relationship.
“I had a lover that taught me a lot about my own body and my own emotional connection to sex,” she said. “That’s when I feel like I healed my relationship with sexuality — when this beautiful man came into my life and helped me walk through that journey.”
She added, “I love sex. I think it is one of the most underrated, underappreciated and undervalued experiences that we have.”
Woodley also shared that she is currently single after a split with rugby player Ben Volavola. She said that while filming her newest film, Endings, Beginnings, which is out now, she “realized I was still at an age where I wasn’t able to fully commit. I couldn’t be available to him in the way that I wanted to be. I didn’t fully love myself.”
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