In a rare instance of an actor claiming he get shut out of Hollywood for doing too little kissing of his co-workers, instead of too much, actor Neal McDonough has said he was basically kicked out of the industry for a couple of years because of his refusal to smooch women who were not his wife. Yellowstone and Justified vet McDonough was talking (per TMZ) on the Nothing Left Unsaid podcast when he claimed that “Hollywood just completely turned on me” when he made it clear that he was serious about provisions in his contracts that he wouldn’t kiss anyone but his wife, model Ruvé Robertson. “They wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore.”
Tulsa King co-star McDonough is well-known as a devout Catholic—he’s said in other interviews that he goes to church “every day”—and says the no-kissing thing is plain as day in all of his contracts. Presumably citing a period in 2010, when he was reportedly fired from short-lived ABC show Scoundrel for refusing to film sex scenes with Virginia Madsen, McDonough says that stance became a massive turn-off for casting agents. “For two years, I couldn’t get a job and I lost everything you could possibly imagine. Not just houses and material things, but your swagger, your cool, who you are, your identity—everything. My identity was an actor, and a really good one. And once you don’t have that identity, you’re kind of lost in a tailspin.”
If you go looking for it, you can see the gap McDonough is talking about; from 2010 to 2011, he only scored a handful of voice roles, which, on the “Neal McDonough is in everything” scale of Hollywood casting, is pretty light. (The next year he was cast in Captain America: The First Avenger, presumably because Dum Dum Dugan’s lips are only for killing Nazis.)
McDonough has talked about his stance on this in the past, including the fact that he’s very upfront with directors and showrunners about his boundaries. (Reportedly, Mark Cherry once told him “But this is Desperate Housewives!” before ultimately relenting.) Luckily for him, the past 15 years have seen Hollywood come around pretty aggressively on the fact that Neal McDonough plays a very creepy bad guy, a role that very rarely involves putting lips on anything (except the scenery, which McDonough remains comfortable giving a big ol’ chew when the moment calls for it).
