Bella Thorne has revealed that she lost an acting job at the age of 10 after a casting director accused her of flirting with him.
The former Disney Channel star recounted the “insane” incident while appearing on Emily Ratajkowski’s podcast High Low With EmRata.
“I had a director give me feedback once and I was 10,” said the now 25-year-old actress. “The casting director calls my agent and the agent calls my mom, and they’re like, ‘So she’s not moving forward because the director felt like she was flirting with him and it made him really uncomfortable.’”
She continued: “What the fuck are you talking about, man?! I don’t give a fuck what I said! I don’t care if I said, ‘Eat my pussy right now’! [I was] 10 years old. Why, why, would you ever think that?”
A shocked Ratajkowski replied: “Also, him feeling that it was a real issue.”
Thorne went on to explain the formal setup of the casting process would not have allowed her to be inappropriate at any point.
“Also, you’re in a director session,” she said. “You can’t really say or do much. You do the scene, you say ‘hello,’ you walk out. There’s no time to like, ‘Let me go sit on your lap or make you feel uncomfortable.’ What the fuck are you talking about, man?”
The actress said she used to blame herself for what happened, admitting she’s been traumatised by the experience ever since.
“I’m trying to find almost fault in myself,” she said. “Like: ‘What did you do, Bella? What did you do that made him feel like this? And every time I’m like, ‘Bella, stop it.’ Even that thought right there is becoming part of the problem … it drives me crazy.”
Ratajkowski concluded: “If you need a more fucked up story about Hollywood and pedophilia and the sexualisation of children, I don’t know that there is one.”
Later in the discussion Ratajkowski recounted a troubling story from when she was modelling at the age of 16.
The model said an agent told her: “This face, this is how we know this girl gets fucked.”
In 2021, Ratajkowski accused Robin Thicke of groping her breasts without consent on the set of 2013’s ‘Blurred Lines’ music video. She has since opened up about the incident in her book My Body.