Here's Why Shailene Woodley Hated Being On The Secret Life Of The American Teenager

Posted by Elina Uphoff on Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Shailene Woodley has solidified her image as a heroine and leading girl by way of starring in seriously acclaimed young grownup movies comparable to The Fault in Our Stars, Divergent, and The Spectacular Now. Before changing into a large Hollywood big name operating reverse hunks equivalent to Ansel Elgort, Woodley began her career on television, landing her large break on the 2008 ABC collection The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

It’s simple to imagine that Woodley would continue to appear again at her Secret Life days with fondness. It is, in the end, the display that arguably introduced her occupation. Turns out that even if the display to start with resonated along with her, the younger starlet turned into dissatisfied, even going as far as to mention she used to be “stuck” with the show for 6 years. Shailene Woodley is nothing like her personality on Secret Life. Here’s why she didn’t revel in taking part in the function.

Woodley Didn’t Agree With The Show’s Anti-Sex Message

Secret Life facilities around the positive and bold 15-year-old Amy (Shailene Woodley) who, after having a one-night stand with the college’s resident bad boy, becomes pregnant. At first the message resonated with Woodley, who knew buddies in the similar catch 22 situation as the show’s main girl.

“Those episodes all hit house,” says Woodley in an interview with Bustle, relating to her experience reading three episodes of the display. “I had buddies in highschool who had been pregnant. It felt like the whole thing that I sought after to be sending into the world.”

However, Woodley’s first influence was based totally on best 3 episodes, but she signed a freelance that locked her in for six years.

As the show advanced right into a cautionary story against sex earlier than marriage, preaching the virtues of abstinence by way of showing characters wearing promise rings, vowing to save lots of themselves for marriage, and shaming those that engaged in premarital intercourse, Woodley began to disagree with the show’s message, explaining to Bustle that it didn’t align along with her personal beliefs.

“There have been a lot of issues that had been written into the scripts that no longer simply me, however so much of the cast, disagreed with,” Woodley says. “There have been trust techniques that had been driven that have been different than my very own.”

Of route, Woodley couldn’t simply go away. She signed a freelance for six years.

“Yet legally I was stuck there. To at the moment it’s one of the toughest issues I’ve ever needed to do.”

In Fact, Woodley Loves Sex

Unlike the message the display promotes, Woodley loves sex, calling it the “most underrated, underappreciated, and undervalued stories that we have got” in the identical interview with Bustle. This is certainly not like Amy in Secret Life, who vows never to have intercourse once more after giving start to her child.

Yet both girls, Woodley and her TV personality Amy, proportion one enjoy: trauma. While Amy experienced the trauma of teen pregnancy and childbirth on a backdrop of standard high school drama, Woodley skilled a dating with intercourse that she describes as unhealthy. Unlike her TV character, Woodley goes on to comprehend intercourse, which she credits to one thriller man:

“I had a lover that taught me a lot about my own body and my very own emotional connection to sex,” she says in the Bustle interview. “That’s after I feel like I healed my courting with sexuality — when this beautiful man got here into my life and helped me stroll thru that journey.”

Related: Here's Why Shailene Woodley Quit Acting After the Divergent Series

Unlike Her TV Character, Woodley Isn’t Monogamous

Although Amy is caught in a love triangle between unhealthy boy Ricky Underwood (her child’s father) and boy-next-door Ben Boykewich, the display’s message is obvious: Save yourself for marriage; save yourself for one individual. But Woodley doesn’t imagine in sex most effective after marriage. In truth, she doesn’t believe that monogamy is the most effective proper method to have a dating. In an interview with the New York Times, Woodley unearths that she has now not been so monogamous in the past:

“I’m any individual who has skilled both an open courting and a deeply monogamous dating in my life, and I feel we’re in an afternoon and age where there should be no regulations excluding for the ones designed by means of two people in a partnership — or 3 other folks, whatever floats your boat!”

Those are unquestionably words her persona, Amy, would by no means utter.

Related: 15 Things Few People Know About Shailene Woodley

What does Woodley value in a relationship, monogamous or in a different way? According to the similar New York Times interview, agree with and communication:

“There needs to be a level of accountability in any dating dynamic, and that duty is just honesty and communication and accept as true with. Apart from that, it’s truly none of our business what other people choose to do with their lives.”

She Doesn’t Believe In An “End-All, Be-All,” Either

Unlike Secret Life, which promotes a monogamous sex-free relationship finishing in marriage, Woodley doesn’t consider one individual is an “end-all, be-all”:

“We’re societally conditioned to think that one individual can be our end-all, be-all. This is an idea I’ve been occupied with continuously at this time, as a result of I’m very much single, and I’ve chosen to be unmarried for some time. The concept of being with somebody … is it only since you’ve fallen in love with that particular person, or as a result of there’s a newness to working out your self because of what that individual can give you?”

This she says in the same interview with Bustle.

Shailene Woodley is surely not anything like her Secret Life TV personality, Amy, so it’s no wonder that the show’s message conflicted along with her own ideals. Although working on the display for 6 long years was once difficult for the young celebrity, one good thing got here out of her experience:

“Being on Secret Life propelled me to be extra vocal about my own trust methods.”

Through the display Woodley found out and solidified her id.

Next: Here's A Closer Look At Shailene Woodley's Naturalistic Life

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