Vanessa Williams Says She Lost A Broadway Role Due To Nudity Scandal

Vanessa Williams reflected on the fallout from the n— photo scandal that forced her to relinquish her Miss America crown, revealing the drama led to her allegedly being blacklisted from opportunities on Broadway.

“My first real Broadway audition was Tommy Tune wanted me to replace Twiggy,” Williams, 63, said on the Monday, August 10, episode of the “Dinner’s on Me With Jesse Tyler Ferguson” podcast.

The Desperate Housewives star said she was being considered for a role in the musical My One and Only, which ran from 1983 to 1985.

“Met with Mike [Nichols], came in, did the audition … I finished my audition. I walk back and say ‘Hi’ to Mike,” she explained. “He goes to Lee Gershwin, who’s Ira Gershwin’s widow, [and says] ‘Wasn’t she terrific?’ [Lee] goes backstage, goes downstairs, the phone rings and it’s her saying, ‘Over my dead body will that w—- be in my show.'”

“I knew that I didn’t get it,” she continued. “I had no idea the severity of the judgment.”

The rejection came after Williams was forced to resign her Miss America title in July of 1984.

The Ugly Betty actress, who was the first-ever Black woman to win the title in 1983, was required to give up her crown after n— photos — which she took as a teenager and under the promise of anonymity — were sold and published in Penthouse magazine without her consent.

Williams called the incident a “betrayal.” She felt the scandal made such a big impact because n— photos were the “exact opposite” of the “pristine image” perpetuated by the Miss America organization.

She claimed the drama provided the “penultimate opportunity” to “bring [her] down.”

“It always comes down to money and of course, Penthouse made a slew of money on all of it,” she continued. “And I was caught in the middle, saying, ‘Okay, I did these as a teenager. No one’s supposed to see them. There is no signed release. They shouldn’t have been seen by anybody anyway, but the betrayal didn’t mean a thing because that was the news, and again, that generates money.”

Williams said the experience gave her the opportunity to “prove” herself outside the beauty queen “box.”

“There were a lot of hurdles that I had to start with in the very beginning,” she admitted.