Keri Russell claims there was a double standard between male and female child actors during her time on The All New Mickey Mouse Club in the 1990s.
The Diplomat star recently stopped by the Dinner’s on Me podcast, where host Jesse Tyler Ferguson asked her if there was a cutoff age for young performers to be dropped from the MMC reboot, which ran from 1989 to 1996.
“It’s usually like girls who look like they were sexually active,” she alleged. “Which, probably, I was one of the first. They’re like, ‘She’s out! She is out! That one is gone.’”
Russell also revealed that she was, in fact, sexually active with one of her male MMC co-stars who ultimately stayed on the program for several years after she was let go. She didn’t name the person, but she was previously romantically linked to fellow Mouseketeer Tony Lucca in the ’90s, who left the show in 1995 at 19 years old.
“The boys stayed ’til they were, like, 19,” she shared. “I was like, ‘By the way, I’ve had sex with that person so I know that they’ve had sex.’”
The Felicity actress appeared on the All New Mickey Mouse Club from 1991 to 1994, starting at the age of 15. Other notable names that starred on the show were Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
“You know, girls and sexuality, people are like… and by the way, there’s me, I’m like a 12-year-old boy body. There’s nothing really sexy about me but I think that was what was nervous,” Russell said before quipping, “Pregnant Mouseketeers aren’t on the roster.”
Elsewhere during their conversation, Ferguson shared that he was surprised at how Russell’s successful career in Hollywood started on the MMC, noting that she didn’t “strike him as like a kid celebrity.”
“It is weird that I was on that,” The Americans actress responded. “I think what’s really the creepiest part of kid acting is usually it’s one or two kids with all adults, and so that really accelerates the adultification of everything. For The Mickey Mouse Club, there were 19 of us. The adults were invisible to me.”
Russell added, “I think that’s what was unique. … I wasn’t completely alone with all the adults and I think that was helpful.”
