In a recent interview, out actor
Garrett Clayton said that he felt very vulnerable while filming sex
scenes in the 2016 film King Cobra.
In the film, Clayton plays Sean Paul
Lockhart (stage name Brent Corrigan), a former gay adult film actor.
Speaking with Queerty, Garrett,
31, said that other actors working on the film said “nasty,
horrible things” to him.
"I knew going into it that there
was a chance I’d never work again,” Clayton
said. “For whatever reason, sexuality scares people, and
feeling comfortable with your sexuality scares them even more."
"I was challenging myself
mentally, saying, 'This is a character. This isn’t me. It’s
okay.' It felt very vulnerable to be pretty much nude and insinuate
sexual acts with basic strangers.”
"Most of them [the strangers] were
respectful but some of them really got to me.”
"At one point during a shoot, I
was on the couch with two men on either side of me, and they started
making jokes about what a slut I was. They’re like, 'This isn’t
his first time.' I felt like they were talking through me. It really
got to me, I ended up leaving the room.”
"They just wouldn’t stop saying
such nasty, horrible things right through me as if I wasn’t sitting
right there,” he added.
Clayton is best known for portraying
Tanner in the 2013 Disney Channel movie Teen Beach Movie and
its sequel Teen Beach 2.
(Related: Garrett
Clayton, Blake Knight marry in Los Angeles; Alicia Silverstone
officiated.)
Clayton added that the experience was
“probably the closest” he'll get to “understanding the female
experience” of sexual objectification.