Keri Russell reflects on the creepy sexism in the Mickey Mouse Club

Keri Russell looked back on her time at The brand new Mickey Mouse Club in a recent episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner is on me Podcast. When the host asked her if there was a minimum age for the child stars to appear on the show, she said, “Usually it’s girls who look like they’re sexually active. And I was probably one of the first. They say, ‘She’s out! She’s out! That one’s gone.'” I mean, yeah. Unfortunately, that catches on.

Not that she wasn’t sexually active, it was just none of her business. She also says that she Was sexually active with one of the male Mousketeers, but He was not fired. Which, yes. makes sense.

“The boys stayed until they were about 19,” she explained. Although she did not name the boy she was dating, she was romantically involved at the time with her co-star Tony Lucca, who was 19 when he left the show in 1995. “I was like, ‘By the way, I had sex with this person, so I know they had sex.'”

This is all especially silly because Russell was 15 when she started the show in 1991, and teenagers are known to become sexually active in their teens.

“You know, girls and sexuality,” she joked. An age-old story. She added, “It’s funny that I was there. I think the really scariest thing about child acting is that it’s usually one or two kids with a bunch of adults, and that accelerates the adultness of it all.” But MMC, she explained, was different because the children outnumbered the adults: “On The Mickey Mouse Club, there were 19 of us. The adults were invisible to me… I wasn’t completely alone with all the adults, and I think that was helpful.”

Given the current debate about the status of child stars in the entertainment industry, I think she should be happy.