Looking back. Matthew Lawrence, who has been acting since childhood, has opened up about feeling uncomfortable during past auditions.
“There’s been many times in my life where I’ve been propositioned to get a huge role,” the Boy Meets World alum, 43, confessed during the Friday, April 28, episode of his Brotherly Love recap podcast. “I lost my agency because I went to the hotel room — which I can’t believe they would send me to — of a very prominent Oscar award-winning director who showed up in his robe, asked me to take my clothes off and said he needed to take Polaroids of me.”
Lawrence further claimed that the director, whom he declined to name along with his former agent, told him that if he did “X, Y and Z,” then he would get a role in a Marvel project. The Brotherly Love alum also admitted to his brothers, Joey Lawrence and Andrew Lawrence, that his agency then let him go as a client just because he “left this director’s room.”
“Not a lot of guys, in my opinion, have come out and talked about this in the industry,” Matthew added. “Now, granted, it’s probably about a third of what women go through. Men go through this as well, whether it’s a woman or another man in power.”
The Mrs. Doubtfire actor and his siblings had opened their Friday podcast episode by discussing the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment in Hollywood.
“The bottom line is, there’s been a lot of those crossroads and those thresholds that, you know, of course, we’ve all been a part of that. And those moments are tough,” Joey, 47, chimed in. “For me, when those moments arose — and there were plenty, obviously — it was just a principle thing for me. I just wasn’t gonna do it and I lost out on a lot of parts too, big movie parts.”
The Lawrence siblings rose to fame playing brothers on NBC’s Brotherly Love, which ran for two seasons between 1995 and 1997. After the sitcom was canceled, they continued acting together in a string of Disney Channel movies before ultimately pursuing separate careers.
Matthew — who is currently dating TLC’s Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas — previously told Us Weekly that he’d “love” to work with his brothers again and revisit Brotherly Love as an adult.
“You know what’s so funny? When you actually get time to think about things, [I remembered] one of my representatives called me and said, ‘Hey, would you and your brothers think about this?’ I had a long conversation,” the Double Threat star exclusively told Us in April 2020. “We’re talking to one of the creators from that show and they were talking about it. The conversation was literally, yesterday, just brought back up to me. I don’t know. I know we’d all love to do it. It’s just, I guess, timing. Timing is everything.”
