Neal McDonough says Hollywood turned on him for refusing to kiss costars

Won’t kiss, will tell.

Neal McDonough has had an up and down experience in Hollywood. The “Suits” alum, 59, explained on the “Nothing Left Unsaid” podcast this week how his career once fell apart because he refuses to kiss his co-stars.

“I’d always had in my contracts that I wouldn’t kiss another woman on screen,” McDonough told hosts Tim Green and Troy Green.

“My wife didn’t have any problem with it. It was me, really, who had a problem with it,” the actor said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to put you through it. I know we’re gonna start having kids,’ and I didn’t wanna put my kids through it.”

The “Desperate Housewives” star continued, “Intimacy is a whole different thing for me. When I wouldn’t do it and they couldn’t understand it, Hollywood just completely turned on me and they wouldn’t let me be part of the show anymore.”

McDonough has been married to South African model Ruvé Robertson since 2003 and they have five children together.

He didn’t name the show he was allegedly fired from, but back in 2019, he told Closer Weekly that he lost his job on the ABC drama series “Scoundrels” in 2010 because of his no-sex-scene rule.

“It was a horrible situation for me,” he said at the time. “After that, I couldn’t get a job because everybody thought I was this religious zealot. I am very religious. I put God and family first, and me second. That’s what I live by. It was hard for a few years.”

On the podcast, McDonough said that he was unemployed for two years after the firing.

“I couldn’t get a job and I lost everything you could possibly imagine,” he shared. “Not just houses, material things, but your swagger, your cool, who you are, your identity, everything. My identity was an actor, and a really good one, and once you don’t have that identity, you’re kind of in a tailspin. And I was in a big, ugly tailspin for a couple of years.”

McDonough also said that the incident led him to drink more.

“I never drank during the set. I never drank during work because I love my craft and I take it with the utmost seriousness in everything I do,” he explained. “But after work or days off or anything, I still feel like I wasn’t a man. I didn’t feel that I was doing the right things or some things just weren’t clicking.”

McDonough’s TV acting credits also include “Band of Brothers,” “Arrow,” “Justified,” “American Horror Story: Double Feature,” “Yellowstone” and “Tulsa King.”

In the 2019 Closer Weekly interview, McDonough gave one of the “Band of Brothers” producers credit for helping revive his career.

“Graham Yost called me and said, ‘Hey, I want you to be the bad guy on Justified,’” he recalled, adding, “I knew that was my shot back at the title.”

One of McDonough’s most recent roles was in the feature film “The Last Rodeo.” His wife portrayed his onscreen spouse and they shared a kiss in the movie.