How What We Watch Impacts Us and the Actors Who Create It
By Movieguide® Contributor
The media we consume has an immense impact on our lives, whether we realize it or not. And for the actors who embody difficult characters and stories, that impact can change their lives.
Mariska Hargitay has been playing Olivia Benson on LAW AND ORDER: SVU since 1999, and the stories she’s told through the show changed how she views the world.
“That’s been a process. When I started the show, I wasn’t aware of how deeply it would go into me,” Hargitay said in an interview with Selena Gomez. “My husband Peter [Hermann] is always like, anytime I go anywhere, my first question is, ‘What’s the crime rate here?’ So it’s on the brain.”
“There’s been times when I didn’t know how to protect myself, and I think I was definitely a victim of secondary trauma from being inundated with these stories and knowing that they were true,” she added. “Those were the parts that I didn’t know how to metabolize, just because of the sheer volume of it. That’s also why I started Joyful Heart [Foundation], so I would feel like, well, at least I’m doing something about it.”
Hargitay isn’t the only actress to feel the heaviness in real life of the role she’s playing.
Movieguide® previously reported on Emilia Clark who struggled with her intense role in GAME OF THRONES:
Right out of drama school, she decided to “approach this as a job” and believed that “if it’s in this script, then it’s clearly needed.” But when she actually began filming the first season, which had a “[expletive] ton of nudity,” she felt a bit differently.
“I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no idea what any of this is, I’ve never been on a film set like this before,” she remembered. “And now I’m on a film set completely naked with all of these people.”
She would dismiss her feelings, have a cry in the bathroom, and then return to filming. That’s when a co-star, Jason Momoa, stepped in. Momoa plays Khal Drogo, who rapes Daenerys after she’s sold into marriage with him. Later in the show, she develops feelings for him…
She acknowledged that filming nude “is terrifying” and that, during rape scenes, Momoa was even “crying more than I was.”
Actress Evangeline Lilly had a similar experience while filming LOST.
“I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt I had no choice in the matter,” she recalled. “And I was mortified and I was trembling. When it finished, I was crying my eyes out.”
Actor Billy Zane recently suggested that actors get “emotional stunt pay” after playing his role in DEVIL ON CAMPUS: THE LARRY RAY STORY, which is about “the titular devil, an ex-con who moved into his daughter’s dorm at Sarah Lawrence College in 2010 and slowly gained control over her roommates’ lives through psychological, physical, and sexual manipulation and abuse.”
“Actors should get emotional stunt pay,” he said. “The secondary experience encroaches on the primary. It really does. You’re recreating much weird trauma. We’re putting coursing adrenaline through our bodies and depleting serotonin and dopamine and freaking ourselves out and the body registers it. In this case, we created a space after cut where everyone can just laugh and check in and go, ‘Whoo, that was weird.’”
Not only does intense content like what Hargitay, Clarke, Lilly and Zane described impact the actors, but viewing those types of stories can influence audiences, too.
Movieguide® founder Dr. Ted Baehr describes how violence and destructive sexual content harms viewers:
Research has shown that the exposure of randomly selected male college students to sexually suggestive R-rated theatrical movies increases their aggressive behavior toward women and decreases both male and female sensitivity to rape and the plight of the victim. After viewing this type of material, both males and females judge a female rape victim to be less injured, less worthy and more responsible for her own plight.[viii]
As parents, it is imperative that we protect our kids and ourselves from viewing content that could damage how we view others, ourselves and the world around us.
To help you do this, Movieguide® provides reviews of popular shows and movies that break down exactly what kind of content you can expect to see.
Questions or comments? Please write to us here.
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