Thanks to the introduction and advent of intimacy coordinators, actors can voice their thoughts, feelings, and potential objections to anything they aren’t comfortable with, but on one occasion, Scarlett Johansson placed the shoe on the other foot with the most unexpected of directors.

While some members of the old guard have scoffed at the notion of intimacy coordinators, giving it the old ‘It wasn’t like that back in my day’ spiel, they’d do well to remember that film and television are in a constant state of evolution, and the overwhelming majority of performers have welcomed the role they play on set, and with very good reason.

Johansson herself has spoken out repeatedly to criticise the way she was objectified and sexualised by people both inside and outside of the industry when she first rose to prominence in the early 2000s, and she’s far from the only one. However, her request to do a nude scene was rejected by Michael Bay, of all people.

The orchestrator of ‘Bayhem’ has never met a female actor he wouldn’t let his camera leer over, with his filmography featuring gratuitous butt shots aplenty. And yet, when he worked with Johansson on the 2005 sci-fi dud, The Island, he revealed his behind-the-scenes modesty for what must surely have been the first time ever, considering he built his name on excess of all kinds.

“I get a call from the assistant director: ‘She needs to see you,'” he recalled to IGN. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, god, here we go’. I’m ready to do Ewan [McGregor] and her in her love scene, and she’s not going to come out. I knock on the trailer of her door. ‘Scarlett?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Can I come in?’ The door opens. ‘I’m not fucking wearing this bra! This cheap-ass bra! OK, I’m going naked’. ‘Scarlett, you can’t go naked. The movie has to be PG-13.'”

Even though The Island was essentially a bigger-budget remake of Logan’s Run that didn’t give it any credit, Johansson saw a flaw in the scene. 

“Well, nobody wears a bra when they’re in bed,” she retorted. “It doesn’t happen!” From Bay’s perspective, all he was thinking about was his studio paymasters, who laid down the mandate that the picture couldn’t capture anything on camera that had the potential to run afoul of the censors.

Obviously, this was two decades ago, when Johansson wasn’t too far removed from her star-making turn in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, with The Island marking the blockbuster debut of an actor who’d soon become more familiar with them than most. It’s a cliché to suggest it was of the times, but after the intense media scrutiny she’s been under since then, it isn’t a situation that’s likely to be replicated.

The Island was rated PG-13 as instructed, but for a filmmaker like Bay, who’s done a stellar job of cornering the market on objectification in his 30 years as a movie director, to shut it down was as unexpected as it was welcome.