During her appearance on 'Dinner's on Me' podcast, the actress talks about the double standard between male and female child actors on the popular kid show.
- July 12, 2024
AceShowbiz - Keri Russell continues to make shocking revelations regarding her time on "The All New Mickey Mouse Club" back in the 1990s. During her appearance on "Dinner's on Me" podcast, the actress talked about the double standard between male and female child actors on the show.
In the episode, host Jesse Tyler Ferguson asked Keri if there was a cutoff age for young performers to be dropped from the "MMC" reboot. "It's usually like girls who look like they were sexually active," "The Diplomat" star responded. "Which, probably, I was one of the first. They're like, 'She's out! She is out! That one is gone.' "
Keri admitted 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. While she didn't name names, the actress was used to be linked to fellow Mouseketeer Tony Lucca.
"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.' " Toni left "MMC", which also starred Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, in 1995 when he was 19.
"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," "The Americans" star said before quipping, "Pregnant Mouseketeers aren't on the roster."
Elsewhere in the episode, Jason said that Keri didn't "strike him as like a kid celebrity." To that, she said, "It is weird that I was on that. 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," she further divulged. "I think that's what was unique. … I wasn't completely alone with all the adults and I think that was helpful."