True story: I’ve never seen Last Tango in Paris. I haven’t seen many of those “iconic” movies, because I’ll start to watch one for like ten minutes and then I’ll give up. Last Tango was like that – I think I rented it once, many years ago, and I couldn’t even got through the first ten minutes so I gave up. The story, as I understand, is that Marlon Brando plays an American divorcee in Paris, and he begins an affair with a young woman, played by actress Maria Schneider. Schneider was only 19 years old when she filmed the movie, which was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The film is famous for its graphic and sometimes violent sex scenes, and there is apparently one sex scene involving… a stick of butter. Well, I say “sex scene.” It was a rape scene. Maria Schneider has always said that she felt raped by Brando and Bertolucci in that scene. And now it seems like Bertolucci once admitted that he conspired with Brando to rape her on screen.

It’s known as one of the most infamous rape scenes in Hollywood history—but Last Tango in Paris director Bernardo Bertolucci admitted in a recently surfaced video that star Maria Schneider never consented to it. Instead, Bertolucci confessed in the 2013 clip that he and Marlon Brando came up with the idea to shoot the assault scene in which Brando’s character uses a stick of butter to rape Schneider on screen. At the time, Brando was 48. Schneider was just 19.

“The sequence of the butter is an idea that I had with Marlon in the morning before shooting,” Bertulocci said in an event held at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2013. He added that he felt horrible “in a way” for his treatment of Schneider but defended himself, explaining that he “wanted her reaction as a girl, not as an actress.”

“I wanted her to react humiliated,” he said. “I think she hated me and also Marlon because we didn’t tell her.” Even so, Bertolucci clarified that he didn’t “regret” how he decided to direct the scene. “To obtain something I think you have to be completely free,” he said. “I didn’t want Maria to act her humiliation her rage, I wanted her to Maria to feel…the rage and humiliation. Then she hated me for all of her life.”

After Last Tango in Paris, Schneider never shot another nude scene. She struggled with drug addiction and depression following the attention the movie brought her. In an exclusive to the Daily Mail in 2007, Schneider wrote that she had felt violated by the experience.

“I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci,” she said. “After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or [apologize]. Thankfully, there was just one take.”

[From Elle]

What’s strange is that I remember that there has been a conversation about this for years, because Schneider has always said that her experience on the film was terrible, and that she was mistreated by Brando and Bertolucci. But because Elle published this story about Bertolucci’s 2013 comments (how have these comments never been published before??), there’s suddenly a huge new outcry. Even celebrities are commenting about it now.

To all the people that love this film- you’re watching a 19yr old get raped by a 48yr old man. The director planned her attack. I feel sick. https://t.co/qVDom2gYf6

— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) December 3, 2016

Inexcusable. As a director, I can barely fathom this. As a woman, I am horrified, disgusted and enraged by it. https://t.co/voGRhafy9K

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) December 4, 2016

Wow. I will never look at this film, Bertolucci or Brando the same way again. This is beyond disgusting. I feel rage https://t.co/uvaLogvv7I

— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) December 3, 2016

Photos courtesy of WENN, MGM.