Brooke Shields got a surprising call after the release of her revealing documentary, “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.”
The actor and model details her tumultuous rise to fame as a sexualized young girl and the trauma she endured throughout her career and life in the Hulu documentary. In it, she touches on her acting role as a child prostitute at the age of 11 in “Pretty Baby,” as well as “The Blue Lagoon,” in which says the filmmakers “wanted to sell my actual sexual awakening.”
The 1980 movie is about two teenagers who fall in love while on a deserted island.
During the April 11 episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” Shields recalled getting a phone call from the movie’s director Randal Kleiser.
“I saw his name on my phone and I was like, ‘Oh, what do I do?’ and I let it go to voicemail because I was like, I want to see what the tone is,” Shields, 57, told host Drew Barrymore about “The Blue Lagoon” director’s call. “And he wants to chat, I don’t know about what.”
“I don’t feel like bringing any of it back up again. It’s not about that," Shields continued. “It was about these males needing me to be in a certain category to serve their story, and it never was about me.”
The model added, “It was not protective of me.”
“It was fun and loving at times, but I was just there, I was a pawn, I was a piece, I was a commodity,” she said.
In her documentary, Shields also details a sexual assault she says occurred after graduating college.
While talking to Barrymore about her experience in Hollywood as a sexualized young actor and the #MeToo movement that arose in 2017, Shields says that she felt like she couldn’t talk about it.
“I didn’t know where I fell on the spectrum,” she said. “I don’t know where to interpret my experiences because I was made to feel culpable, and by the same time, you victim shame yourself.”
“We were so young and it was ‘so appropriate (at that time)’” she continued. “I couldn’t feel sorry, I didn’t even know what it was. And so when it was called out to me as such, I was like, ‘No, uh, uh. No, no, not going there. It did not happen.’”
While on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna on April 4, Shields revealed that her 16-year-old daughter Grier was “outraged” after seeing her documentary.
“Grier looked at it as all the things that I kept from her. She was outraged and she was very sad," Shields, who is also mother to 19-year-old daughter Rowan, said. “She said, ‘Nothing you say to me, Mom, is going to make it better.’”
Shields added that Grier told her, “‘I hate seeing bad things happen to you.’ She just sobbed and ran out of the screening room, and my husband was upset because I wasn’t protecting her.”
As for Rowan, after seeing the film, Shields said, “She was able to say, ‘Women need to see this.’”
In the documentary, both of her daughters say they have never seen “Pretty Baby” or “Blue Lagoon” and don’t plan on it.