Just when you thought all of the old-school tea from The All New Mickey Mouse Club had been spilled, Keri Russell enters the chat. Fans have heard plenty of stories about Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera’s tales from the set, but The Americans star had a very different story to tell.
On Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s on Me podcast, the 48-year-old actress revealed that while there wasn’t an official cutoff age for cast members, Disney allegedly took a unique approach to getting rid of the older female teens — an unfortunate first lesson in sexism. “It’s usually like girls who look like they were sexually active,” Russell alleged. “Which, probably, I was one of the first. They’re like, ‘She’s out! She is out! That one is gone.’” However, she wasn’t finished with her revealing bit of gossip.
“The boys stayed ’til they were, like, 19,” she added. “I was like, ‘By the way, I’ve had sex with that person, so I know that they’ve had sex.’” While she didn’t name her fellow co-star, a little internet sleuthing will tell you that she dated her co-star Tony Lucca during her time on the show. She was cast at the age of 15 in 1991 and departed the show in 1994. Lucca left the show in 1995 when he was 19 years old.
Russell didn’t seem mad about the situation, but she joked about her body type. “You know, girls and sexuality, people are like…and by the way, there’s me, I’m like a 12-year-old boy body. There’s nothing really sexy about me but I think that was what was nervous,” she joked. “Pregnant Mouseketeers aren’t on the roster.”
The Felicity actress has been reflective of her time on the Disney Channel show telling W Magazine in 2023 that she believed she was the “least talented” cast member. “I’m not kidding. When I look at those kids, I’m like, why in the world did they pick me? Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling and Britney Spears. It was wild,” she continued while noting that being a kid actor isn’t easy. “My sanity, my dignity,” Russell summed up on what she saved from starring on the 1990s show. “Not everyone got out alive.”
Before you go, click here to see celebrity kids who are all grown up.
