Shailene Woodley Gets Very Candid While Looking Back at 'Secret Life' Years

It has been over a decade since Shailene Woodley shot to fame with her role on the ABC Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager and now she’s sharing some candid thoughts about her time on that show.

“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,” the 28-year-old actress said in a new interview with Bustle.

The show ran for five seasons from 2008 to 2013 and over the years, the message of the series became a lot less progressive and characters were shamed for having intercourse and some vowed to save themselves until marriage.

“There were a lot of things that were written into the scripts that not just me, but a lot of the cast, disagreed with,” Shailene said. “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.”

In another recent interview, Shailene opened up about being in an open relationship.