Shailene Woodley Talks Being 'Stuck' On Secret Life Of The American Teenager & Disagreeing With The Show's Abstinence Message

Shailene Woodley outgrew The Secret Life of the American Teenager way before the show ended!

The 28-year-old actress opened up about her experience working on the hit Freeform (then-ABC Family) series in a new interview with Bustle, revealing that she oftentimes “disagreed” with the show’s message.

She reminisced of her time between 2008 to 2013:

“When I signed onto Secret Life, I read [three] episodes and I signed a contract for six years. [Those episodes] all hit home. I had friends in high school who were pregnant. It felt like everything that I wanted to be sending into the world.”

But that changed in the later seasons of the teen drama, when Woodley noticed that abstinence was being pushed while her character Amy Juergens’ pregnancy had become something of a cautionary tale.

She explained:

“There were a lot of things that were written into the scripts that not just me, but a lot of the cast, disagreed with. There were belief systems that were pushed that were different than my own. Yet legally I was stuck there. To this day it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. So being on Secret Life propelled me to be more vocal about my own belief systems.”

One of those belief systems? There should be “no rules” when it comes to love!

As we reported, the Big Little Lies star got candid about previously being in an “open” relationship while promoting her new movie Endings, Beginnings in a recent interview with The New York Times. When asked about the potential for her character to simply date both men (played by Jamie Dornan and Sebastian Stan) in the love triangle at the heart of the film, the actress said:

“Listen, I’m someone who has experienced both an open relationship and a deeply monogamous relationship in my life, and I think we’re in a day and age where there should be no rules except for the ones designed by two people in a partnership — or three people, whatever floats your boat!”

However, she was quick to clarify that any relationship should still have some appropriate boundaries, noting:

“But there has to be a level of responsibility in any relationship dynamic, and that responsibility is simply honesty and communication and trust. Apart from that, it’s really none of our business what people choose to do with their lives.”

Preach, gurl!

What do U think of the starlet’s confession?

[Image via Patricia Schlein/WENN]