Karla Souza Refused To Strip Down For GQ‘s Cover & Wore This Instead

How To Get Away With Murder star Karla Souza was game to be on the cover of GQ Mexico. But she made it clear from the get-go that she would not be stripped down to her bra and panties, splayed out on a bed. "I wanted sophisticated, fancy, nice and beautiful and sexy, but not that," Souza told E! at the InStyle Awards this month. "After a year, they were like, 'OK!' Luckily, they said yes to bathing suits and things I felt more comfortable in." One reason the 29-year-old was so adamant about having control over her wardrobe? "At the beginning of my career, I did a magazine cover where they gave me boobs that I don't have, a butt that I don't have and a waist that I don't have. I was appalled," she explained. "It took me three years to ever be in a bikini again. I didn't want people to do that to my body again." In the end, Souza bared her ideal amount of skin in a bustier-style tankini top and a bikini bottom, which you can see on the cover below — even though the magazine had prepared her for the fact that more covering up might transition into fewer newsstand sales. Whoever introduced that idea was wrong, though. "They had done a lot of the fully naked kind of covers in Mexico," Souza mentioned, adding that a lot of her fellow actress colleagues had told her that nudity is the mag's "thing." "They said that's what sells but then they told me my issue sold," she went on. We're so glad that Souza stuck to her guns — and still came out on top.