Cinemax Femme Fatales Key Art - P 2012
An actress identified only as Anne G filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday against Time Warner, HBO, Cinemax and a production company called True Crime LLC claiming that she was bullied into performing nude scenes, sexually harassed and placed in a dangerous work environment.
While the suit does not name the show she worked on, an attorney who filed the suit, David Olan of Santa Monica, tells The Hollywood Reporter that Anne G had worked on a single episode of the late-night Cinemax series Femme Fatales that was titled “Jail Break.”
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Anne G claims in the suit that she was not told when she auditioned or when she was hired under an AFTRA contract that she would be required to perform scenes in the nude and simulate sexual intercourse. She says that on Dec. 6, 2011, the first day of shooting, “she was blindsided with rewrite after rewrite which necessitated her character to simulate sexual intercourse and for her to appear nude but for pasties on her nipples and a sticker on her private parts.”
She alleges this was all done “without the proper health and safety protections,” nor was the set closed except for essential production crew as union rules require.
When Anne G complained that she was not comfortable with what she was being asked to do and that she never would have agreed to the job if she knew it involved “soft-core porn,” the suit says, she was told if she did not perform as requested, her contract allowed producers to sue her for $100,000 for being in breach of contract.
“Under the duress and threat of significant pecuniary retribution if she did not comply,” says the lawsuit.
In the suit, she names Steve Kriozere as “executive director” of the production and Joe Schwartz as assistant director. She charges they made “inappropriate sexual comments to her,” including telling her that showing her “tits” was a “prerequisite to even be on this show.”
The suit says Anne G was “required to rehearse practically nude due to the malfunctioning pasties on a nonclosed set devoid of nonessential production crew. The on-set rewrites while the camera was rolling, sexual comments, threats of financial retribution, among other things, created an intimidating, sexually hostile and offensive work environment.”
On the IMDb service, Kriozere is listed as an executive producer of Femme Fatales.
In a July 2010 article in THR, Femme Fatales is described as a “thriller anthology series” based on a men’s magazine of the same name. The article said the series would have a “strong erotic component.”
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A press release in May 2011 said the first of 13 episodes of Femme Fatale would air beginning May 13, 2011. It was described as a “sizzling show” with a plot built around a “murder mystery, hidden secrets and of course femme fatales.”
In response to a call for comment to the True Crime production office, another producer said he had not yet seen the suit and would have no comment until after he conferred with the show’s attorney.
A spokesperson for HBO and Cinemax tells THR that Femme Fatales was overseen from the company’s New York headquarters and that no one was available to comment.
