CALLING IT OUT

‘Entourage’ Star Exposes HBO Show’s ‘Toxic’ Set

Debi Mazar said things changed behind the scenes during the third season.

Entourage star Debi Mazar wasn’t loving her job on the show for most of its eight-season run.

Mazar, who played crude publicist Shauna, said her experience turned sour behind the scenes in an interview with The Times.

“Season 1 was a joy-fest. But in the third season, the set was a testosterone-fuelled environment. I’m tough, but it got toxic towards the end for me,” the Goodfellas actress explained. She added that her appearance became a source of tension on set.

“I’d had my second baby, and they didn’t like that I got fat,” she explained, “even though I got skinny again.”

The series, which won six Emmys during its run, also starred Adrian Grenier, Kevin Connolly, Kevin Dillon, Jerry Ferrara, and Jeremy Piven.

Mazar wasn’t the only actress to complain about the environment on set. Last year, Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot, who made a brief cameo as Lisa in a 2009 episode, told the Israeli publication Mako that she “hated” working there.

“What I hated and didn’t enjoy at all was being on Entourage‚” Gadot said when asked what event in her career she regretted. She added, “Someone there behaved inappropriately,” but didn’t name names. “It got to the point where I left the set and stopped working with them.”

Mazar said she wasn’t quiet about the changes on set. “It was complicated because I’m outspoken and never held back my discontent,” she told the publication. “But I always was professional, and I’m grateful I was on it. It was a lot of fun, until it wasn’t.”

Mazar said she liked the job for her character, which was loosely based on Hollywood PR legend Pat Kingsley. Shauna was the cast’s tough-talking, non-nonsense maternal figure. “With TV, you don’t know what they’re going to write. I took a job to make money. I mean, [creator Doug Ellin] wrote a really strong character, but that set was very testosterone-driven and misogynistic,” she added.

Though her role was the silver lining for her experience on the show, Mazar has long said that her dialogue sometimes made her uncomfortable. She told People TV in 2020, “I was kind of, almost like embarrassed by my dialogue, because I curse, and I obviously have the ability to be a complete trash mouth, but some of the things I would say would completely make me blush,” she recalled.

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Entourage was made into a feature film in 2015. Mazar reprised her role.

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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