A week after the stars of the 1968 Romeo and Juliet film filed a $500 million lawsuit against Paramount Studios, Pippo Zappirelli, son of the film’s late director Franco Zappirelli, criticized actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting.
In a message he gave at the end of the week and published this evening (Sunday) by the British “Guardian” newspaper, Zafirli Jr. wrote that the scene in question, following which the lawsuit was filed, is “far from being pornographic.” “It is embarrassing to hear that today, 55 years after the filming, two elderly actors, who owe their careers to this film, wake up and declare that they experienced abuse that caused them years of anxiety and emotional suffering,” it said.
Zaffirelli added that the two actors, despite the “anxiety and emotional suffering”, were recorded praising the film three years ago. He even noted that Hussey collaborated again with his father in the mini-series “Jesus of Nazareth” that aired in 1977, while Whiting came especially to his father’s funeral in Italy in 2019.
As mentioned, in the lawsuit they filed last week, Hasey Whiting claimed that they were promised that the bedroom scene in the film would be filmed with their bodies in body-colored underwear, but at the last minute the director demanded that they be naked and promised that the camera would not show their bodies – a promise he did not keep. They claimed that they were photographed naked without their knowledge even though they were minors, and that Zefirli threatened them that if they refused to be photographed naked – the film would fail at the box office and their careers would be damaged.