The lead actors of the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet have found themselves in a legal battle with Paramount Pictures over the movie’s nude scene.
Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, who starred as Romeo and Juliet, respectively, have accused the studio of sexual abuse and harassment in two separate lawsuits. In the initial complaint, filed in December 2022, the costars claimed they were told by the film’s late director, Franco Zeffirelli, that the movie would not feature nudity and that they would wear flesh-colored undergarments for a bedroom scene, according to the Associated Press.
The original suit also alleged that Zeffirelli suggested that the performers filmed the scene naked or the movie “would fail.” At the time of the production, Hussey was 15 years old and Whiting was 16.
“What they were told and what went on were two different things,” the actors’ business manager Tony Marinozzi told Variety in January 2023. “They trusted Franco. At 16, as actors, they took his lead that he would not violate that trust they had. Franco was their friend, and frankly, at 16, what do they do? There are no options. There was no #MeToo.”
A judge dismissed the case in May 2023. Whiting and Hussey fought back by filing a second lawsuit against Paramount in February 2024, claiming the studio digitally redistributed the film without their permission.
Keep scrolling to learn more about the Romeo and Juliet and Paramount legal drama: