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Alison Brie says she was asked to 'take your top off' during Entourage audition

For a TV series that's become shorthand for the industry's blind focus on male-skewed titillation, Alison Brie's casting couch revelation is hardly surprising.

Brie, best known for her roles on Community and Mad Men, has said she was once asked to go topless during an audition for the HBO hit Entourage.

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"Early in my career, I auditioned for three lines on an episode of Entourage that I had to go on in a bikini or like shorts and the tiniest shirt," she said.

"And they were like, 'Okay, can you take your top off now?'"

The actress made the comments at the ATX Television Festival in Austin, Texas, where she was promoting her new Netflix series GLOW. The series centres on a group of out-of-work performers who agree to join a fledgling all-female wrestling league - the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling league, which was a short-lived phenomenon during the mid-to-late '80s.

Brie plays a struggling LA actress who joins the league in lieu of other substantial acting opportunities in the male-skewed entertainment industry.

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Following uproar from fans and co-workers, Brie later clarified her comments on Twitter saying that she wasn't asked to go "totally topless" by Entourage's producers, as she was wearing a bikini under her shirt – a relief, perhaps, but a telling display of the leery attitude young actresses routinely face in Hollywood casting calls.

Entourage, which ran from 2004 to 2011, picking up multiple Emmys and Golden Globes along the way, followed the sexual exploits of fictional Hollywood star Vinnie Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his crew, and was loosely based on the real life of executive producer Mark Wahlberg.

What began as a satirical swipe at behind-the-scenes Hollywood egotism eventually ended up a tone-deaf celebration of those same targets, and a feature-length revival, released in cinemas in 2015, was widely panned for its uncomfortable approach to gender politics.   

Brie's comments were in response to a question from the talk's moderator about how much the audition process – and Hollywood opportunities in general – had improved for actresses in the 30-odd years since GLOW's backdrop.

"It has not changed that much," she said.

"I've gone through auditions for Marvel movies and auditioned a million times for roles with three lines and you are begging for them, and I'd be glad to get them!

"It's brutal, it just is," she added.

GLOW, which also stars Betty Gilpin, Marc Maron and British musician Kate Nash, premieres on Netflix on June 23.