After Harvey Weinstein’s mischievous and deplorable behavior towards female actresses and film industry personnel became the centerpiece of all Hollywood news years ago, it signaled the existence of other names. notables guilty of the same. Former Disney star Maitland Ward fell victim to one such actor hitting him too young.
As a teenage actress in the 1990s, 16-year-old Maitland Ward would land a dream role in Love glory and beauty, a television soap opera. She now reveals filming for the TV series was fertile ground for her co-star Dylan Neal’s attempts to groom the actress who was underage at the time.
Maitland Ward says she was groomed by Dylan Neal on set
Working in an industry like Hollywood from the age of 16, while dealing with your own issues as a teenager can be quite a mentally taxing task.
The life of then 16-year-old Maitland Ward took a drastic turn in her acting career after she landed the role of Jessica Forrester alongside co-star Dylan Neal who played heartthrob Dylan Shaw.
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Neal was 24 at the time, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the man playing the idol character was dashingly handsome, and he was. Ward reveals that his looks and charisma immediately charmed her back then.
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But in a recent interview with Page Six, the now 45-year-old actress reveals that while she was obsessed with Neal at the time, she also thinks it was because she was put in such a mess. state of mind by her co-star-
“Looking back now, it was kind of a grooming situation. And not necessarily for him to have sex with me or anything – but to do things to drive me around and become very attached to him and only to him.
“I thought it was like, ‘Oh, he really likes me, he thinks I’m so awesome.’ He was really a pulling and pushing person. He would pull me in and we would do fun things together, and then he would push me away and be like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you like that?'”
Predatory behavior, even from major players on film sets and the industry in general, has been a huge problem for Hollywood. The Weinstein case, although much more extreme, is a very clear example of the horrors one must endure to become a big shot in the industry.
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Maitland Ward reveals details of co-star Dylan Neal’s problematic antics
In his recently published memoirs entitled Rated X: How Porn Freed Me From Hollywood, Maitland Ward further details her experience on the set of Love glory and beauty with Dylan Neal, and it’s pretty disgusting.
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The boy meets the world The star claims her relationship with Neal at the time was “strange”, and the latter’s response to seeing her innocence and naivety in the industry was what one might call “problematic” today-
“It was my first time in Hollywood. I got the show on my second audition and he was older than me, but he came across like he just wanted to be that big brother, but in a way inappropriate on which I reflect now.
Ward says she didn’t realize what Neal was doing at the time, she continued-
“Dylan took my virginity on screen…and it was something he talked about – no, rather, constantly bragged about – and was proud of. quite sweet or innocent. “It’s his first time; you don’t want it to appear to move.
It’s no surprise to hear that such an incident was endured by Maitland Ward for so long. The culture of the industry back then wasn’t as progressive as it is today, and when you look at Neal’s behavior towards Ward from a modern perspective, it just seems deplorable, and boring at best.
Source: Page 6