Grace Van Dien, who played Chrissy Cunningham on season 4 of Stranger Things, has taken a step back from acting. The 26-year-old revealed on a live Twitch stream on March 7 that she’s “turned down four movie roles” in the last two weeks because of an alleged incident that involved a movie producer. “The fact of the matter is the last few projects I’ve worked on I didn’t have the best experiences with some of the people I had to work for,” Grace said. “One of the last movies I did, one of the producers hired a girl that he was sleeping with and then he had her ask me to have a threesome with them.”
Grace claimed that after she turned down the threesome, she “cried and was so upset” about the situation. “When people are like, ‘How is streaming better for your mental health?’ That’s how,” Grace said. “I get to stay inside my house and play video games and I don’t have my boss asking me to have sex with them.”
Grace explained that another actor supported her during the alleged on-set incident. “My castmate, she was there with me and was like, ‘Did I just hear that correctly?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And she was like, ‘You want to go take a walk?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And we just had a miserable time,” Grace recalled. “We cried a lot on that shoot.”
Looking towards the future, Grace told her Twitch followers that she’s “going to stick to streaming for little bit.” She added, “And I hope that’s not a huge wrench in your plans for me, but I’m happy here. And I’m developing my own projects, and I’m hoping that someone decides to fund them. Because then I can be in control of my own set, and I’m not going to ask my actors to sleep with me.”
Grace had her breakout role as Chrissy in the fourth season of Stranger Things. Chrissy was killed in the first episode by Vecna. Before Stranger Things, Grace was in the Netflix teen drama series Greenhouse Academy. She played Sharon Tate in the 2018 film Charlie Says. Grace’s father, Casper Van Dien, is also an actor.