The actor said stripping down for a good cause made him nervous at first, but he eventually found the experience “life-changing.”
Taye Diggs would give you the shirt off his back for a good cause — or at least he’d drop trou.
On Friday’s episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, the actor talked about stripping down for the upcoming TV special The Real Full Monty, in which he and some fellow male celebrities are set to bare it all (well, most of it) in the name of promoting cancer screening.
“What can I do to bring awareness?” Diggs mused on the daytime talk show. “I was like, ‘Let me show my ding-a-ling on TV!’ Mom would be very, very proud.”
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Airing Monday night on Fox, the two-hour special features Diggs, Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf), Bruno Tonioli (Dancing With the Stars), James Van Der Beek (Dawson’s Creek), Anthony Anderson (Black-ish), and the NFL’s Chris Jones. Modeling itself after the 1997 British comedy film The Full Monty, in which a group of older men strip down to raise money to benefit their friend, the show is intended to raise awareness for prostate, testicular, and colorectal cancer testing among men.
“I’ll be honest,” Diggs said, “Anthony Anderson kind of spearheaded the entire situation, and he told me that we wouldn’t have to get naked.”
“He’s a liar!” Kelly Clarkson shouted in mock outrage.
“He’s a coaxer,” offered Posey, who joined Diggs in the interview.
“Or lied! To my face!” Diggs corrected.
But it doesn’t sound like there are any hard feelings. “Once we started the process, the choreographer, Mandy Moore, was amazing,” Diggs said. “I thought it was just going to be a favor for a good cause, but once we stared the whole process, we really related to each other, and all of us have been touched by cancer in a very personal way. It was kind of life-changing.”
Posey agreed, adding that “it was sort of brave for all of us to do this thing, and I just love the concept where, if we can get naked in front of thousands of people, you can do it in front of your doctor and get tested and screened.”
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Diggs and Posey shared that they both lost their mothers to cancer, which gave them the courage to be totally vulnerable on stage.
The Centers for Disease Control estimate that 30-50% of all cancer diagnoses could have been prevented by modifying behaviors, one key modification being getting routine cancer screenings.
Clarkson proposed that a “conservative” mindset around the human body is what “keeps people from getting checked out, that fear blinds them from what they should be doing.”
Posey acknowledged that “there was a little fear from all of us in following through with this thing. We all thought, ‘We’re not actually going to have to get naked,’ but we did. That’s what this is all about. For everybody, but for men specifically. Look — be vulnerable, go get checked out, be naked.”
