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Keri Russell, who starred in the All-New Mickey Mouse Club in the '90s, revealed some interesting details about being on the show regarding what determined how long you were cast for. Most of it depended on whether you were a boy or a girl and whether you looked “sexually active.”
ET Weekly reported that the Star Wars alum opened up about being a Mouseketeer in a recent episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Dinner's on Me podcast. She was between 15 and 17 when she appeared on the Disney program.
Keri Russell opens up about her time on The Mickey Mouse Club
Ferguson asked, “Was there a cut-off age where like, after you turned 17, you can no longer be on it?”
“Yeah, it's usually girls who look like they were sexually active, which probably I was one of the first,” Russell answered. “They're like, ‘She's out. Oh, she is out.'”
She added, “The boys stayed till they were 19. I was like, ‘By the way, I had sex with that person, so I know that they've had sex.' For real.”
The actress elaborated a bit more on the big differences at that time.
“You know, girls and sexuality,” she added. “And by the way, me, I [had] like a 12-year-old boy body. There's nothing really sexy about me, but I think that was what [made Disney] nervous. Pregnant Mouseketeers aren't on the roster.”
With all the recent news of the child star industry, especially with the documentary Quiet On Set that shed light on abuse at Nickelodeon, it's interesting to hear that Disney wasn't quite so perfect in the way they handled their cast. However, there was no sexual abuse or anything too inappropriate happening during her time at the network that she was aware of.
Russell believes that's due to being around many other people her age and the herd mentality of adults not even getting close to them.
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“I think the creepiest part of a kid acting is usually it's one or two kids with all adults, and so that really accelerates the adultification of everything,” she revealed. “And for the Mickey Mouse Club, there were 19 of us. The adults were invisible to me, you know what I mean?”
She was hired mostly because she was “normal,” in her opinion.
“Some of my friends were going to a giant casting call for Disney at the downtown Denver Convention Center,” the star said. “And I went, I stood in line and did my little nerdy dance, and they had me read a little skit about a mermaid brushing her teeth or something.”
“I just happened to get it,” she noted. “I think back then Disney was looking for kids that were kind of just normal.”
The gig launched her career, as Keri Russell has gone on to have parts in major films like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and shows like The Diplomat, Arrested Development, and Scrubs.
With all the controversy surrounding kid stars, surely things may be different these days when it comes to the casting and treatment of child actors at Disney. Let's hope so…
