Minnie Driver Says Producers Once Denied Her a Wetsuit so They Could ‘See My Nipples’

A year after the release of Good Will Hunting, a film that earned her an Oscar nomination, Minnie Driver says she was treated like “an idiot” when she pushed back on a costuming decision on the set of the 1998 disaster thriller Hard Rain. During a recent interview on Jameela Jamil’s podcast, I Weigh, Driver claimed that producers of the film, which starred Morgan Freeman and Christian Slater, told her that she could not wear a wetsuit underneath her costumes, despite filming in “20 million gallons of water.”

As she explained, “It’s set during this massive storm. There were huge rain machines. We shot crazy hours. It was tough…. Everybody else could wear a wetsuit underneath their costume, and I was told by the producers that I couldn’t because they wanted to see my nipples, and that there was no point in having the wet T-shirt if you couldn’t have what was underneath it.”

After Driver resisted the decision, she claims that she was vilified in the industry. “I remember calling my agent. I then remember it being like, boy, people wouldn’t speak to me on the set. I was so punished for it,” Driver continued. “It was leaked to the press that I called and complained about conditions, but it was as if there were nothing to complain about and I was just complaining.”

In 2012, The Guardian noted that the film’s release coincided with “rumors of Driver being a diva on set.” The actor set the record straight, telling the publication, “I did have a fight with the producer on that film [Hard Rain]. I think that’s where a lot of it came from. But we were shooting 16-hour days in a tank of millions of gallons of freezing-cold water. It was utterly miserable.”

Over the course of a seven-month shoot like this, Driver told Jamil, “you do turn on yourself. You do go, ‘It was my fault for saying anything, you stupid big mouth. You should have shut up.’ And that goes in and then alters the way in which you kind of see yourself and your natural inclination to put your hand up and go, ‘This isn’t right.’”

Hard Rain costume designer Kathleen Detoro told Variety via email that “full wetsuits and pieces” were “supplied to all cast and crew,” including “tops, bottoms and booties” and “no expense was spared to keep actors and crew as dry as possible in an action water film.” Of Driver’s account, Detoro wrote that “producers never gave me those instructions” and that despite wetsuits being purchased for everyone, “It is up to [the] actor to decide what parts they wear or don’t wear.”

Variety noted that Driver and the film’s credited producers Ian Bryce, Mark Gordon, and Gary Levinsohn, none of whom the actor specifically named, did not return the publication’s request for comment.