Rachel Bilson Reveals She Got Fired From A Job For Making Sexual Comment About Being 'Manhandled'

During her appearance on Nicole Byer's Why Won't You Date Me podcast, the Hart of Dixie star revealed she was let go by an unnamed company after she made a comment about her bedroom preferences on her Broad Ideas podcast in 2023.

"Did I want to fight it? Absolutely," Bilson told Byer.

"Look, I can see both sides. When you take something out of context and you read something as a standalone comment, it can come off a certain way, sure."

However, Bilson noted at the time she was "talking basically with girlfriends" and it was intended as a joke.

"I said something like, 'I like to be manhandled,'" she explained.

"That's nice. 'Throw me around,'" Byer quipped.

She said the girls at the time had a similar reaction to the comment.

"Olivia [Allen], who cohosts Broad Ideas with me, her mom's like 83. She was like, 'I like to be manhandled!' You know? Like everyone could relate," Bilson argued. "But because I used that word in whatever context, they just took that out of the conversation. It didn't sound great. But I think it was a very conservative company so they weren't comfortable talking about sex at all, in general."

Bilson then insisted: "We were joking around!"

She said she felt she had to change how she acted following the experience.

"I definitely felt myself filtering a little bit after that," she explained. "Cause like, 'Oh my god, if I say this am I gonna lose this job? Am I gonna be judged? Shamed?'"

Bilson discussed her 2023 firing at the time on her Broad Ideas podcast declaring it was the "first time" it's ever happened to her in her professional life.

"[That] I lost a job this week because of things that were said."

"A single mom, a woman, lost a job because they were being candid and honest and the subject was sex," she stressed at the time.

While she didn't regret the statement, she did admit that had she known there was a job on the line she would have "said it differently."