Keri Russell says Mickey Mouse Club’s ‘sexually active’ girls were circumcised
July 10, 2024
Keri Russell joked that The brand new Mickey Mouse Club The executives didn’t want any “pregnant Mouseketeers” on their “list,” so girls were kicked out when they started developing.
“It was so bizarre that we were there,” Russell, 48, said to his friend Jesse Tyler Ferguson during the Tuesday, July 9 episode of his podcast “Dinner’s on Me.”
The actress recalled that she joined the Disney Channel show in 1991 at the age of 15 and left at 17.
“Was there an age limit after 17 years that you could no longer participate?” asked 48-year-old Ferguson Russell, who was next to Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera And Nikki DeLoach during their last season.
Russell said there was an unofficial age limit, joking: “Usually it’s girls who look like they’re sexually active, and I was probably one of the first.” She teased: “They say something like, ‘She’s out. Oh, she’s out. That one’s gone.'”
Russell claimed that the rule was not the same for her male co-stars, including Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling And JC Chasez for the 1993 occupation.
“The boys stayed in the meantime until they were about 19,” she said, revealing: “I was like, ‘By the way, I had sex with that person, so I know they had sex.’ Seriously.”
Russell did not reveal which of the Mouseketeers she slept with as a teenager, but she said it was clear that Disney had a double standard toward the girls.
“You know, girls and sexuality (are complicated),” she explained. “And by the way, I (had) something like the body of a 12-year-old boy. There’s nothing really sexy about me, but I think that’s what made (Disney) nervous.”
Russell had great success after appearing in the teen series – she played in bliss from 1998 to 2002, before she played Elizabeth Jennings in The American from 2013 to 2018 – but she is aware that her story could have turned out very differently.
The actress revealed that the only reason she and her Mickey Mouse Club The fact that her co-stars “came out alive” after their time as child stars was because they had gone through time together.
“I think the scariest thing about child acting is that it’s usually one or two kids with a bunch of adults, and that really accelerates the adultness of it all,” Russell said. “And for The Mickey Mouse ClubThere were 19 of us. The adults were invisible to me, do you know what I mean?”
The Brand new Mickey Mouse Club ran from 1989 to 1996. It was a remake of the original Mickey Mouse Clubwhich was broadcast from 1955 to 1958 and starred Annette Funicello, Jimmie Dodd And Sharon Bairdamong others. Disney also appeared in the original series and lent his voice to Mickey Mouse.
Russell can now look back on a long career as a television actress and film star and was last seen in 2023 in Cocaine Bear and plays ambassador Kate Wyler in The Diplomat.