Matthew Lawrence Fired by An Agency After Refusing to Strip for Director

Matthew Lawrence claims he was sacked by an agency after declining to stay in a director's hotel room after being requested to strip naked.

On the Friday episode of their Brotherly Love podcast, the 43-year-old Boy Meets World alum spoke with his brothers Joey and Andrew Lawrence about the #MeToo movement and his personal experience with an Academy Award-winning director.

"I lost my agency because I went to a 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 alleged. "And if I did X, Y, and Z, I would become the next Marvel character."

The remark came at the start of their podcast episode, and was followed by Lawrence's admission that the agency eventually dismissed him, purportedly 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," Lawrence remarked. "Of course, it's only about a third of what women go through. Men, too, go through this."

Lawrence's representative did not immediately respond to HotGossipNewz's request for further comment. Lawrence did not name the director or the organisation.

The actor, who co-starred in the late '90s WB Network sitcom Brotherly Love with his two brothers, also spoke about Terry Crews, who has been vocal about his own #MeToo experience.

Crews said in 2018 that Adam Venit, the head of the motion picture department of William Morris Endeavour (WME) and top Hollywood agent, grabbed him at a 2016 party. The actor sued WME and Venit, but the case was later dropped by the Los Angeles District Attorney due to the statute of limitations. Venit rejected the claims and was banned and punished as a result.

"A lot of these stories, a lot of my other male friends — both men and women in this industry — have gone through, but there's a double standard, and this is where I bring Terry Crews," Lawrence said.

"Terry Crews comes out and says it, and everyone laughs at him." People are not behind him. Why do they kick him out? Because he is a man who represents masculinity, and I believe our society is less prepared to hear that situation happening with males than it is with women."

"The bottom line is, there's been a lot of those crossroads and those thresholds that, you know, we've all been a part of," Joey said. And those are difficult times. When such situations happened — and there were many, obviously — it was just a matter of principle for me."

"I wasn't going to do it. I also missed out on a lot of parts. "Big film parts," Joey added. "And, as you mentioned, I know the guys who went on and did them, and I'm not sure what situations they were in." I'm not going to speculate. But I know it was put up in a system where that was expected."