Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Recently I mentioned in passing the topless scenes on Weeds last season. I suspect this is coming out now to provide publicity for the upcoming season, starting on June 8, but there is suddenly more talk about Mary-Lousie Parker’s nude scenes. There were two scenes last season in which she wasn’t wearing much more than in the above picture, but was seen from the front. Parker discussed one, telling More magazine that she was goaded into appearing nude:

She’d been fine with the series’ wildly erotic sex scenes, she says, but the shot in the bathtub in which the camera lingered on her breasts seemed intended to titillate.  “I didn’t think I needed to be naked, and I fought with the director about it, and now I’m bitter,” she says. “I knew it was going to be on the Internet: ‘Mary Louise shows off her big nipples.’  I wish I hadn’t done that.  I was goaded into it.”  Weeds’ coexecutive producer, Roberto Benabib, defends the moment, saying that the nudity was necessary to convey the character’s vulnerability. “We felt at that point in her life, her defenses had been so thoroughly stripped away, there was a nonchalance to the nudity that informed the scene,” he says. “I thought it was wonderful, one of the five best scenes Mary-Louise has ever done [on Weeds].”

Isn’t it one of the jobs of the producer to goad actors and actresses into doing what is best creatively for the show? With all the hype over this scene, her topless sex scene earlier in the season was actually much racier than the bath tub scene, with far more explicit pictures than this floating around.