Mckenna Grace has pushed back on headlines that tied her refusal to appear nude on screen to her dream of playing a Disney princess, calling the two topics separate. The 20-year-old actress addressed the coverage Tuesday in an Instagram story, after a Cosmopolitan interview went viral. Variety, Deadline and People published stories that presented her stance on nudity as a sacrifice made for a future Disney career. Grace said that reading is wrong.
“The two quotes being used right now in these titles are unrelated,” she wrote. She explained that her discomfort with nude scenes and hypersexual roles reflects her own comfort level at this stage of her life, and has nothing to do with Disney. She said she respects actors who take such parts and dismissed the debate as a distraction from weightier topics.
Cosmopolitan published the interview Nov. 2. She told the magazine she does not do nudity or very hypersexual material, calls it terrifying, and doesn’t know if that will change. In the same answer, she noted that she doesn’t limit herself to wholesome work, pointing to her character’s death at the hands of Ghostface in “Scream.” Only then did she say she hopes to play a Disney princess someday. Headline writers fused those thoughts into a cause and effect that Grace never drew.
The episode shows how quickly a layered answer shrinks in the headline cycle. A stray aspiration became a stated reason. Grace named no particular princess role, and Disney’s live-action “Tangled” is already in production with Teagan Croft as Rapunzel. Many fans online voiced support for her boundaries.
Grace began acting as a child, with credits including “Designated Survivor,” “I, Tonya” and “The Haunting of Hill House.” She next appears in Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping,” playing twin sisters Maysilee and Merrilee Donner. Maysilee is a tribute from District 12. The film opens in theaters Nov. 20.
