Amber Riley, who starred as Mercedes on ‘Glee’, revealed on the Podcast ‘And you really missed that’ that she refused to film a sex scene with Chord Overstreet’s character Sam.
“I said [‘Glee’ co-creator] Brad [Falchuk]“Absolutely not,” Riley shared with her former co-stars and podcast hosts Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale. “He gave me the blue pages or something. It was written. I said no.'”
Riley said there was a planned “full” sex scene in which Mercedes loses her virginity to her boyfriend Sam. After Riley rejected the idea, Falchuk pitched a more toned-down angle for the scene.
“He said, ‘Well, what if we, you know, have you guys hold hands and walk into the room and then close the door,’” she said. “And I thought, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’”
Riley continued, “I’m not telling you guys, no. I’m not fighting for anything. … This would have been so awkward, and I feel like it would have been awkward.
Riley also thought that the sex storyline for Mercedes, who was a devout Christian and at one point even stated that she was saving herself for marriage, was not something that “my character would have done.”
“I mean, I grew up a church girl. It just wouldn’t happen. Not at that age, you know what I mean? Not that easy,” Riley explained. “And then being pressured and all that stuff, and doing it for someone else when it’s not really what you really believe, the message that that would have sent to young girls wouldn’t have been great.”
Mercedes and Sam had an on-and-off relationship that started in the season finale of “Glee.” They finally decided in the fifth season that they should just remain friends.