Kate Moss reveals she felt ‘scared’ during her famous Calvin Klein photoshoot with Mark Wahlberg
The famous photoshoot featured the topless duo of Mark Wahlberg and Kate Moss. Moss who was just a teenager at the time, does not recall the shoot fondly at all.
The famed British model Kate Moss is still a big name in the world of fashion and fame today. She recently appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs show.
The show’s host, Lauren Laverne asked the actress about a photoshoot that essentially began her career, a Calvin Klein photoshoot.
The model, who is now 48 years old, said she “had not very good memories” of the entire thing and talked more about how the situation was incredibly uncomfortable for her.
In the shoot, she worked with actor Mark Wahlberg who at the time was a rapper known as “Marky Mark.”
“He was very macho and it was all about him,” she remembered. “He had a big entourage. I was just this kind of model.”
The ad featured Moss pressing her bare breast again Wahlberg’s chest in a variety of poses. The campaign ran in print and commercials all over the world and was widely popular globally. That shoot began the long-standing relationship Moss shared with the brand, however, for weeks leading up to that particular shoot, Moss said she suffered from “severe anxiety.”
“I really didn’t feel well at all before the shoot,” she recalled. “For like, a week or two, I couldn’t get out of bed.”
This revelation prompted the host to ask whether Moss felt objectified during the shoot, to which the famous model replied, “Yeah, completely. And vulnerable and scared.”
She added that the brand loved her discomfort because it added to her vulnerability. She said, “They played on my vulnerability,” and the fact that she was “young” and “innocent” is something that “Calvin loved.”
This is not the first time Moss has talked about this incident publicly. In a 2012 interview with Variety, she said she “had a nervous breakdown when I was 17 or 18, when I had to go and work with Marky Mark and [photographer] Herb Ritts.”
She recalled that during the shoot she did not feel like herself at all. She remembers, “I felt really bad about straddling this buff guy. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks. I thought I was going to die.”
Her anxiety was so bad that according to her, a doctor prescribed her valium. But photographer Francesca Sorrenti advised her against using the medication.
In March 2020, Wahlberg was asked in an interview with The Guardian about what he thought of the comments Kate Moss had made about her photoshoot with him.
The actor was surprised at learning about Kate’s experience and said, “I think I was probably a little rough around the edges. Kind of doing my thing. I wasn’t very … worldly, let’s say that. But I’ve seen her and said hello. I think we saw each other at a concert here and there, we said hi and exchanged pleasantries.”
It is always interesting to see what we think of certain events in our life in hindsight. Hopefully, Kate Moss did not experience anything like that again in her professional life.
