Keri Russell Says Girls Were Out of the Mickey Mouse Club Once They Looked "Sexually Active"

Keri Russell remembers when she was no longer eligible to be a Mouseketeer.

The Felicity alum began starring on the Disney Channel remake of the '50s children's variety series The Mickey Mouse Club in 1991. After two years, alongside the likes of Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling, she exited the series at the age of 17.

And she has a theory as to why.

"It’s usually girls who looked like they were sexually active," the 48-year-old told Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the July 9 episode of his podcast Dinner's On Me of who got the boot from the show. "Which, probably, I was one of the first."

She later added jokingly, "Pregnant Mouseketeers aren’t on the roster."

The Diplomat actress also signaled that there was a disparity between the trajectory of female and male actors on the new Mickey Mouse Club.

"We had boys stay till they were like 19," she said. "I was like, 'Um, by the way, I had sex with that person, I know that they’ve had sex.'"

The Mickey Mouse Club alumni  JC Chasez and Tony Lucca, Russell's ex-boyfriend, were both 19 when they made their last appearance on the series in 1995.

E! News has reached out to the Walt Disney Company for comment and has not heard back.

Russell also offered a theory on how she emerged from her child acting days unscathed.

"I think what’s really the creepiest part of kid acting is that usually, it’s one or two kids with all adults and so that really accelerates the adultification of everything," she said, "and for the MMC there were 19 of us. The adults were invisible to me.”

Russell, who went on to have a successful acting career and receive four Emmy nominations for her work on shows like The Americans and The Diplomat, has spoken about her time on the Mickey Mouse Club before.

Asked if she saved anything from her time on the show, she told W magazine in 2023, "My sanity, my dignity."