,” Stasey says after a quick
glance around at her surroundings at Insomnia Café in Los Angeles.
“Almost consistently for every episode I was doing something sexual. I
was naked, I was doing this, I was making out with this person, I was
, and I realized that was my position. Which is
fine. I’m totally fine with that. It’s great.”
,
it reflects the kind of sexual openness the 24-year-old actor
celebrates. The more we talk about it, she reasons, the less weird it’s
going to be. And for a generation of young girls embarking on the
complicated journey of self-discovery, just knowing they’re normal can
make all the difference.
,” Stasey
says.
Of course, it’s not as though Kenna has any trouble expressing her
sexuality. The most liberated of the ladies-in-waiting trailing behind
Mary (Adelaide Kane) on The CW’s period drama, Kenna has wielded
, been subjugated by those who seek to control her body, and
finally discovered mutual respect and love over the course of
’s
first season. She’s gone from being a virgin to the mistress of King
Henry (Alan van Sprang) to the wife of Henry’s bastard Bash (Torrance
Coombs).
“She’s kind of done it all,” Stasey says, taking a sip from her iced
coffee. She manages to come across as both charming and matter-of-fact
as she discusses touchy subjects, lowering her voice ever so slightly
when using words like “
“
Masturbation” is, in fact, a major topic of conversation:
Reign
raised eyebrows with its pilot, in which Kenna — so sexually charged
from watching a newly married couple consummate their relationship —
ducks into a hallway to
pleasure herself. It was a rare depiction of female masturbation on network television — and with a teenage girl doing the deed, no less.
Even for Stasey, who doesn’t shy away from much, filming the scene was a daunting prospect.
“
I was kind of horrified at the thought of having to masturbate on
screen,” she admits. “Masturbation was such a sensitive issue for me as
an adolescent, as a young woman, the thought of doing it publicly,
albeit very tame, it felt like it was going to be an insight into me and
my desires and my methods, I guess you could say. Because a little
piece of you has to find its way into those situations, into those
scenes.”
When the pilot finally aired,
the masturbation scene had been cut
down significantly: While it was obvious what Kenna was doing, the act
itself was mostly just implied. As showrunner Laurie McCarthy
put it,
“With The CW’s concern, we all came to a creative decision that allowed
us to keep the bulk of the scene, but to make it more suggestive. It
felt like the right way to do it.”
Stasey is somewhat less understanding.
“
I was disappointed,” she admits. “It’s always a little bit personal
when your work is cut down for whatever reason. And when it’s for
reasoning that’s as antithetical to my views as this was, it’s even
harder to swallow. It would be like if you were a gay man on television
kissing your lover in a scene, and they had to cut it down because of
network sensitivity.”
Stasey’s disappointment was compounded by the fact that she went
through with it, despite her initial discomfort — and she was proud of
her performance when all was said and done.
“
I fucking did it,” she adds. “I did it in front of all those men
that I didn’t know and all those women I didn’t know, and now people got
to edit it and watch it and fucking dissect it.
There have been
conversations over boardroom tables about my masturbating, so why
couldn’t you just let it happen?”
Editing choices aside, the simple inclusion of a scene of female
masturbation on a teen drama remains a bold one. Particularly as the
depiction of female pleasure on the whole is far more restricted than
that of male sexuality. The response to scenes like Kenna’s clandestine
masturbation speak to a double standard in terms of what audiences are
comfortable with.
Variety’s senior TV editor Brian Steinberg found the scene in question so distasteful that
he wrote, “There’s pushing the envelope, and there’s dunking that envelope in a sink full of bourbon and trying to light it on fire.”
It’s a response that may disappoint Stasey but does not surprise her.
“
We are the fairer sex. We are pure. We are not earthly creatures,”
she jokes. “And I think to put us in the midst of all of it, to see that
we are in fact just as sexually driven as men, is kind of confronting.
Also the fact that we are largely, nowadays, not reliant on men to
provide pleasure for us.” Part of what makes Kenna such a fascinating
character is that she brings what feels like a distinctly modern
sensibility to a series that takes place in 1557. In fact, all of the
women on the show are complex, three-dimensional characters who, at
times, espouse more feminist ideals than many of the contemporary female
characters on television.
Stasey suggests that perhaps it’s the societal restrictions these women face that allows
Reign
to grant them more developed interpersonal relationships and internal
lives. But there’s something to be said in particular about Kenna’s
sexual independence, an exciting quality for a female character on
network television, regardless of the time period.
“[Kenna] kind of doesn’t give a fuck. She’s making decisions of her
own accord,” Stasey says. “
Self-determination is what she’s trying to
achieve. Obviously in those times, you couldn’t have rampant sexual
partners. You needed some sort of, I guess, arrangement whereby losing
your ‘virtue’ was not worth losing everything. She’s as much as a
feminist as you could have been during those times, and every decision
that she’s made for herself, by herself, I think is a testament to her
strength.”
Of course, that’s not to say that Kenna represents a feminist ideal.
Stasey acknowledges that she has a harder time with scenes in which her
character is bent to the will of others. The world of
Reign is,
after all, 16th century France: However evolved Kenna feels — and
however historically inaccurate the show allows her to be — she’s still a
product of the times.
So although Stasey believes there are aspects of Kenna that could prove helpful to young girls watching
Reign, she also notes that it’s a bit more complicated than simply wanting to grow up to be her.
“I hope women that watch it can at least take with a grain of salt
the level of importance that is placed on our virginities and on our
male counterparts,” Stasey says. “I would hate for any young girl to
watch and be like,
This is the standard by which I will set my life.
I think they’ve done an incredible job of creating female characters
who are really empowered by the times rather than restricted by them.
Or, at least, empowered enough within the restrictions that they find
themselves in.”
And for her part,
Stasey continues to speak candidly about not only
Kenna’s sexuality, but also her own. The more she talks about it, she
explains, the less awkward everyone else has to feel. In her own life,
the frank and shameless discussion of sexuality has helped her evolved
to a state she hopes other young women can achieve.
“
I’ve always struggled with relationships and my sexuality and being
bisexual and not knowing how to sort of embrace that while also not
being judged for it,” Stasey says. “It took me dating feminists to
understand that these things are OK. I always knew it was OK — I was
always fiercely defensive. There was always this little bit of doubt in
me that people would think the worst of me, that people wouldn’t
understand me.”
Stasey and Reign can’t do all the
heavy lifting alone, of course, which is why she expresses the need for
more positive representations of uninhibited female sexuality in TV and
film.
Cable, at least, is making strides forward with shows like Comedy Central’s
Broad City and HBO’s
Girls,
both of which allow their female characters to talk about sex openly
and, for the most part, without fear of judgment from those around them.
“
Broad City is how I wish we could all be, whereas
Girls
is maybe a more accurate representation of how things are,” Stasey
posits. “There is still this expectation, there is still this reticence
and fear, but I think that [
Girls creator]
Lena Dunham and [
Broad City creators] Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson are forging the way forward.”
These are the shows Stasey wishes had existed when she was younger
and struggling to figure herself out. When she thinks back to the female
characters she was familiar with growing up, she has trouble
identifying any that she was truly impressed by — or who made her feel
like less of an outsider.
“I bore this great shame,” Stasey says. “And
I would pray every time
before I’d masturbate. I was like, ‘Dear God, this is the last time,
except maybe three more times on the way to Queensland.’ I was so
scared. And because, ever since I can remember,
I’ve been fiercely
attracted to women. No one in my world resembled that at all.”
At this point, Stasey can look back on her past from a more
enlightened perspective. She speaks proudly about her refusal to cater
to a culture of slut-shaming and notes — with her consistently
refreshing candor — “Because of this antiquated, patriarchal, and
patronizing mentality,
we are scared to express ourselves.”
It’s strange, at times, to hear an actor talk so openly about such
taboo subjects. Many figures in the public eye are reluctant to even
admit to dating, let alone speak freely about masturbation and fluid
sexual identity. But for Stasey, as for Kenna, open is the only way to
be. Shocking people is an unintended side effect, and one that neither
has time for.
“I’ve undoubtedly offended people,” Stasey says, “but in the end I’ve
learned, the people that will understand are the people I want to
connect to, anyway. And if I can change anyone’s opinions, that’d be
fantastic. But there are some people that are so set that it doesn’t
matter. And if my sexuality offends and repels or intimidates anybody,
then we would never, ever connect, professionally or personally.”
The best way for Stasey to stop offending people with discussion of
female sexuality is to expose them to what they’re so afraid of. In the
same way, shows like
Reign, in depicting female pleasure, are teaching audiences to — in blunt terms — get over it.
“My dad and I had a conversation before I left,” she continues, “and
he said, ‘I think you’re living with a sort of air of naiveté, because
the world that you want to live in, the world that you expect to live in
isn’t the world that you’re currently living in. People aren’t always
going to accept it.’ And my response to that is, I think he and other
people confuse naiveté with an unfailing commitment to an ideal. It’s
like, yes, things aren’t this way, but I have to communicate as though
they are, so that things will eventually change. If you compromise in
any kind of movement or any kind of wave of revolution, if you sort of
play the game, things are gonna change far more slowly than you need
them to.”
Reign may not seem like a series with
many teaching moments — it’s more steamy soap than after-school special
— but there is undeniable power in its female characters and the way
they continue to express themselves.
Now nearing the end of its first season, the show has proven its
commitment to portraying realistic female sexuality past that
masturbation scene in the pilot. It’s not simply a method to shock and
titillate viewers, but to normalize something that should be far more
commonplace by now.
“I would just love to think that through experiencing Kenna and other
women that are showcased like her, [young girls] will learn to discover
that there’s nothing wrong with being sexual and embracing your
sexuality,” Stasey says. “It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Again, in hushed tones, but fully into the recorder, Stasey
continues, “
I was so isolated by how fucking horny I was as a young
girl. I thought I was deranged … I just remember feeling so much shame
and so much guilt as a young girl, and I really hope that can be
eliminated for girls my age who go through the same thing.”
Beyond what it means for the young women watching
Reign —
and given the fact that it’s a romantic drama on The CW, that’s a
significant portion of the audience — depicting female sexuality
contributes to a larger cultural shift, the same trend whose tremors are
felt on
Broad City and
Girls.
It’s not simply a matter of creating strong female characters, though
that’s important too. It’s showing women as sexually independent people
whose bodies and pleasure exist for themselves and not for the men
around them. While not a radical concept, it’s one that television
continues to struggle with.
And many, like Stasey, are growing increasingly impatient. She smiles
before offering this pithy summation: “
I’m really just looking forward
to the day when a woman’s orgasm isn’t scary.”
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