16 TV Actors Get Uncomfortably Real About Filming Steamy Scenes

Romance fans had been holding their breath waiting for Season 3 of Bridgerton to be released. Finally, viewers get to see the relationship blossom between fan favorites and “only friends” Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton).

Much focus was also around how the show would navigate its trademark intimate scenes with this couple. For her part, Nicola Coughlan expressed a strong stance to the creative team: don’t shy away from sex scenes. She explained:

I specifically asked for certain lines and moments to be included. There’s one scene where I’m very naked on camera, and that was my idea, my choice. It just felt like the biggest ‘f*ck you’ to all the conversation surrounding my body; it was amazingly empowering. I felt beautiful in the moment, and I thought, ‘When I’m 80, I want to look back on this and remember how f*cking hot I looked!’

Before a show comes out, it’s never certain how popular it will end up being, which can sometimes lead to cutting corners. Nevertheless, while filming Season 1 of Bridgerton, the creative still made sure that their actors had the very best support for every aspect of the show, including the steamy sex scenes.

Phoebe Dynevor, who plays Daphne Bridgerton, a main character in the first season, explained how choreographed the intimate scenes were with the on-set intimacy coordinator:

It really was like shooting a stunt, it looked real, but we’ve got padding on. The angles are very… I mean, I’ve shot intimacy scenes before in the past without any of that. And I can’t believe really how new this all is, because it just changed the game.

We felt super safe and it just meant that when we got on set, we already knew exactly what we’re doing. We’d blocked it all so specifically. I knew exactly where his hand was going to go at what point. So it just meant that there wasn’t any room for a director to go, ‘Oh, I want to see this now.’

When the audience first meets Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) in season one of Game of Thrones, she’s a naive young woman under the thumb of her cruel brother. We see her essentially sold off to Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) to be his wife; she’s then focus of several sex scenes that some people had a hard time watching.

However, as the show continues, Daenerys finds her power. This is reflected in a Season 4 sex scene with Daario (Michiel Huisman) where Daenerys is very much in control of her body. Filming this scene was quite a different experience for Emilia Clarke than her previous work in that realm. She said:

It’s brilliant. I actually went up to [GOT creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss] and thanked them. I was like, ‘That’s a scene I’ve been waiting for!’ Because I get a lot of crap for having done nudes scenes and sex scenes. That, in itself, is so antifeminist. Women hating on other women is just the problem. That’s upsetting, so it’s kind of wonderful to have a scene where I was like, ‘There you go!’

Sophie Turner joined the cast of Game of Thrones when she was only 14 years old. Within the first few seasons, her character Sansa Stark goes though incredible trauma, including being married off to a much older man in Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage).

However, one of the most gruesome scenes in all of GOT (which is saying something) comes in Season 5, depicting Sansa experiencing sexual assault at the hands of her new husband, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon).

Turner got through the process of filming these challenging scenes developing a unique way to cope. In a 2022 interview looking back on those scenes, she said:

The subject matter was so heavy that I just developed a coping mechanism of just having the most fun in between takes, so I wouldn’t get traumatized. But I’m sure I’ll exhibit some symptoms of trauma down the road.

She added,

At that age, I don’t think I could comprehend a lot of the scene matter. And the first few years, I had my mum with me because she was chaperoning me, so she would be very helpful and give me snacks.

In Shameless, Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum) has a lot on her plate, between taking care of her many younger siblings, keeping a roof over their heads, and dealing with her often-drunk father.

All the while, she has an air of “I do what I want” to her. This also carries into Fiona’s conduct in romantic and sexual situations, as Rossum explained:

It doesn’t make sense that [Fiona] would wear a bra and care at all about what she looks like when she’s having sex. Sex is meant to feel good, and she wants to feel good. Her life is so sh*tty in so many ways. Some people use alcohol, some people use gambling – and some people use sex.

At the same time, Rossum described filming one of these scenes as an “acquired experience.”

Charlie Hunnam quickly became a Hollywood heartthrob after starring on Sons of Anarchy for seven seasons. During his time on-screen, Hunnam occasionally partook in romantic scenes.

Unfortunately for him, these kinds of scenes are Hunnam’s least favorite to shoot for a few different reasons:

I try to be sensitive to the fact that we’re doing something intimate, but also keep a clear boundary. Because I’m in a very committed relationship, and I’m also cognizant that it’s not my girlfriend’s favorite part of my job. It’s a delicate balance to strike – to be emotionally open enough to have an experience that feels honest between two people but also maintain that it’s just for the film. It’s not my favorite thing to do. I’m also a germophobe.

Hunnam doubled down on refuting the common notion that romance scenes are fun or titillating to film, adding:

[E]veryone thinks it’s great to be an actor and get to kiss a bunch of beautiful actresses in films, but I actually hate it.

In a show titled Masters of Sex, it’s safe to assume there are going to be some spicy scenes. Over four seasons, the series showcases the relationship of two real-life pioneers of sexual research, Dr. William Masters and Virginia Johnson (played by Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan).

In one scene, Johnson is fighting with Masters in a hotel room. After he removes her robe, she masturbates to completion. As the scene was focused solely on Caplan standing by herself, naked, it was not easy to film. Caplan said:

That was not my favorite day. Doing it was not terrible or traumatic in any way, it was more the moments in my trailer leading up to going out there and doing it. I haven’t really had the feeling of wanting to get the f*ck out of there, and I wanted to get in my car and just keep driving. I just didn’t want to do it.

Caplan added that the director, Michael Apted, created a safe environment, which made a big difference:

So I got to do it in a way that I felt good about how I did it because it wasn’t at all for the male gaze in the least.

In April 2020, people were needing a desperate distraction from the emerging pandemic; many found that escape in the beautifully told love story of Connell and Marianne in Normal People.

Just one season long, the series entranced audiences with the chemistry between the main characters. Part of this may result from the care that was given to preparing for nude scenes.

As Daisy Edgar-Jones, who played Marianne, explained:

Another element that I was proud that was part of the series was the equality in nudity between Paul [Mescal] and I, I think that’s really important. Also, if you’re trying to tell the truth about a relationship, you have to also include the truth of what that means in terms of intimacy.

Audiences agreed that this “truth” that Edgar-Jones is referring to gave a realness to the scenes the actors shared that isn’t always present in romances.

Nicole Kidman is known for giving her all to every role, even if it puts her outside her comfort zone. This was the case as she portrayed Celeste in the show Big Little Lies.

At one point in the show, Celeste is sexually assaulted, which left Kidman having to shoot many scenes in ripped underwear and hardly anything else. She explained how difficult it was to go through those motions, but how she knew she needed to for the character to feel real.

And I felt very exposed and vulnerable and deeply humiliated at times. I mean, I remember lying on the floor in the bathroom at the very end when we were doing the scenes in episode 7, and I was lying on the floor and I just wouldn’t get up in-between takes. I was just lying there, sort of broken and crying, and I remember at one point Jean-Marc [Vallée, the director] coming over and just sort of placing a towel over me because I was just lying there in half-torn underwear and just basically on the ground with nothing on and I was just, like [gasps].

But at times I would have flashes of images of women that have gone through this and I’m like, ‘This is authentic, this is the truth and this is what I have to do, and it would just come through like that.’

Paul Mescal, who portrays Connell in the beloved coming-of-age show Normal People, is the first to admit that he wasn’t always confident filming the sex scenes.

The idea of shooting those scenes may be far more anxious than the actual shooting process from day to day. There’s an awkward 10 minutes when you’re like, okay, I have to be relatively naked in front of a group of strangers… from an actor’s perspective you’ve got to treat that the same way you would a scene where you’re speaking to each other.

At the same time, Mescal said that he and co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones often found themselves in fits of laughter amidst the tense feelings.

On the Friday of the first week, me and Daisy had to do a day of sex scenes and we were covered in this gel called Egyptian Magic. It’s basically fake sweat. We had to switch positions and our bodies were in close contact. When we separated it made a really loud fart noise. Me and Daisy started hysterically laughing, but the crew and director (Lenny Abrahamson) all thought that one of us had farted and really were trying to preserve our dignity.