Keri Russell claims girls were too old for the Mickey Mouse Club because they seemed “sexually active”

In the 1990s, Keri Russell starred in the Disney Channel remake of The Mickey Mouse Club.

But she had to leave the show at the age of 17 for a controversial reason, she told Jesse Tyler Ferguson in an interview for his podcast, Dinner is on me.

“Yeah, usually girls who look sexually active have to go,” she joked. “And I was probably one of the first. They said, ‘She’s out!'”

“The guys stayed in the meantime until they were about 19,” Russell added. “I was like, ‘By the way, I had sex with this person, so I know they had sex.’ Seriously.”

Russell was part of the show’s cast, which also included Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake. “I’ll be honest with you: I was literally the least talented person there,” she told W Magazine last year.

She joined the cast at 15.

“I was living in Colorado at the time,” Russell said. “And some of my friends went to a big audition for Disney at the Denver Convention Center downtown. And I went and stood in line and did my little nerd dance. And they had me read a little skit, like about a mermaid brushing her teeth or something silly with chocolate or something. And then I got it by chance.”

“I think Disney was looking for kids who were somewhat normal at the time,” she said.

Russell managed to escape the abuse that some child stars are subjected to.

“I think the really scariest thing about child acting is that it’s usually one or two kids with all the adults,” she said. “So it really accelerates the adultness of everything. And for The Mickey Mouse Club, we were 19. The adults were invisible to me.”

“That way I wasn’t completely alone with all the adults,” she added. “And I think that was helpful.”