Grace Van Dien, who plays Chrissy Cunningham on the hit Netflix series Stranger Things, said she encountered sexual harassment while working on one of her last movies and therefore will take a step back from acting.
During a live stream on Twitch, the 26-year-old actress said she's turned down at least four movies in the last two and a half weeks after a producer allegedly asked her to join her in a threesome. Instead, Van Dien said she'd rather spend time on Twitch, where she can control her own environment.
"Here's the thing: I've seen that some people are upset with me for turning down acting projects and deciding to stream more, but the fact of the matter is, the last few projects I've worked on, I didn't have the best experiences with some of the people I had to work for," she said (via IndieWire). And with streaming, I get to choose who I hang out with, who I talk to, etc., etc."
Van Dien would later add that in "one of the last movies I did, one of the producers asked me to, like, he hired a girl that he was sleeping with and then he had her ask me to have a threesome with them. So like, that's my boss. I didn't [do it] and I cried and I was so upset, but it's like, when people are like, 'How is streaming better for your mental health?' That's how."
She added, "I get to stay inside my home and play video games and I don't have my boss asking me to have sex with him. That's how this is better for my mental health."
Van Dien, who has appeared in a number of small and big screen roles, including V for Vengeance, Julius Caesar, Live!, What Comes Around and The Fix, among others, would go on to say that she informed her management about the ordeal. She also said that a castmate witnessed the alleged incident "and was like, 'Did I just hear that correctly? And I was like, 'Yeah.' And she was like, 'Want to go take a walk?' I was like, 'Yeah.' And we just had a miserable time. We cried a lot on that shoot."
According to IndieWire, the young actress concluded her live stream saying, "That’s why I’m going to stick to streaming for a little bit, and I hope that’s not a huge wrench in your plans for me, but I’m happy here. And I’m developing my own projects and I’m hoping that someone decides to fund them because then I can be in control of my own set and I’m not going to ask my actors to sleep with me, so that’s cool, right?"
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