Casting couch

A physical couch on the set of the pornography website Backroom Casting Couch

The casting couch is a euphemism for the practice of soliciting sexual favors from a job applicant in exchange for employment in the entertainment industry, primarily acting roles.[1][2] The practice is illegal in the United States. Predominantly male casting directors and film producers use the casting couch to extract sex from aspiring actors in Hollywood, Bollywood,[3][4] Broadway, and other segments of the industry.[9] The term casting couch originally referred to physical couches in the casting office, but is now a metonym for the phenomenon as a whole. Depictions of casting couch sexual encounters have also become a genre of pornography.

  1. ^ a b Adams, Thelma (17 October 2017). "Casting-Couch Tactics Plagued Hollywood Long Before Harvey Weinstein". Variety. Archived from the original on 17 October 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
  2. ^ Fallon, Claire (18 October 2017). "The 'Casting Couch' Euphemism Lets Us Pretend Hollywood's All Right". HuffPost. Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
  3. ^ "Bollywood: The reality of sexual harassment". BBC. 28 April 2018. Archived from the original on 26 June 2022. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
  4. ^ Mohamed, Khalid (7 September 2018). "Why It Has Been Raining Boys on Bollywood's Casting Couch". The Quint. Archived from the original on 3 December 2021. Retrieved 7 December 2019.
  5. ^ Dessem, Matthew (13 October 2017). "In 1956, a Fan Magazine Published a Four-Part Casting Couch Exposé. It Didn't Go Well". Slate. Archived from the original on 13 October 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  6. ^ Morris, Regan; Bicker, Laura (14 October 2017). "Exploring the casting couch culture of LA". BBC. Archived from the original on 25 November 2018. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  7. ^ Dutka, Elaine (15 October 1991). "Scenes From the Home of the Casting Couch: The Talk of the Country Has Hit a Nerve in the Industry That Creates the Images of Women in Popular Culture". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 7 January 2019. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
  8. ^ Hutchinson, Pamela (19 October 2017). "Moguls and starlets: 100 years of Hollywood's corrosive, systemic sexism". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19 October 2017. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
  9. ^ [1][5][6][7][8]