Maggie Gyllenhaal thinks prostitution should be decriminalised.
The 40-year-old actress plays a sex worker in her new TV show ‘The Deuce’ and she thinks it would be safer and healthier for everyone involved in the illicit industry if it was no longer a criminal act.
She said: "Who needs a union more than a prostitute? I’m quoting David Simon (show creator) actually and I agree with him.
"My instinct is to say decriminalise it and make sure everybody’s safe, healthy and taken care of. "
Maggie – who has daughters Ramona, 11, and five-year-old Gloria with husband Peter Sarsgard – has a producer credit on the programme, which also stars James Franco, because she wanted to be involved in the "storytelling process".
She said: "There was a little part of me that was concerned they weren’t interested in telling the same story as I was interested in telling.
"That’s why I asked to become a producer because I wanted to have some guarantee that I would be included in the storytelling process.
"The joke on set was, ‘Maggie what kept you up last night?’ There was always one thing that I would write a long email about at night. I would say, ‘Here are the tiny things. If you don’t do these, fine, but you must do this.’ "
And one topic the actress insisted on being shown on the show was her character masturbating or having sex away from her work.
She told Britain’s ELLE magazine: "I thought that would be, in some ways, an opening into her needs, her desire, her agency.
"I didn’t hear anything about it for a long time. David Simon sort of joked with me, like, ‘What? Really?’ but he delivered a script with a storyline about Candy’s own love life, and even includes her masturbating and having an orgasm that’s both vulnerable and profound.
"It shouldn’t, but somehow it seems radical to watch a woman whose job is a sex worker focusing on her own pleasure."
Maggie Gyllenhaal calls for decriminalised prostitution
