Chord Overstreet and Amber Riley in ‘Glee’
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Billboard Women in Music 2024
Amber Riley is revealing the reason she refused to film a sex scene with Chord Overstreet‘s character Sam on Glee.
The actress shared on a recent episode of the And That’s What You Really Missed podcast that she turned down a planned scene where her character Mercedes lost her virginity to boyfriend Sam.
“I told [Glee co-creator] Brad [Falchuk], ‘Absolutely not,’” Riley recalled to her former co-stars and podcast hosts Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale. “He gave me the blue pages or whatever. It was written. I said, ‘No.’”
Riley explained that a “full-blown” sex scene was initially written, but when she rejected the idea, she said Falchuk attempted to pitch her another plan for the scene.
“He said, ‘Well what if we just, you know, have you guys hold hands and walk to the room and then like close the door,’” the Single Black Female actress said. “And I was just like, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’”
Riley continued, “I don’t tell y’all, no. I don’t fight on anything. … This, it would have been so awkward, and I feel like it would have read awkward. I also just feel like it just wasn’t what my character would have done. I just didn’t feel that way.”
Her character on the hit series was described as a devout Christian, who also professed on the show at one point that she was saving herself for marriage. That is another reason why Riley felt like Mercedes suddenly deciding to have sex wouldn’t have made sense in the storyline.
“I mean, I grew up the church girl. It just wouldn’t happen. Like, not at that age, you know what I’m saying? Not that easily,” Riley explained. “And then being pressured and all that kind of stuff, and doing it for someone else when it’s not really what you really believe, the message that I felt that that would’ve sent to young girls wouldn’t have been great.”
Glee, which followed a group of students who joined a glee club to escape the harsh realities of high school, aired from 2009 to 2015. Beginning in the show’s season two finale, Mercedes and Sam had an on-and-off relationship throughout the series. They ultimately decided by season five that they were better as just friends.