The Revealing Truth About Filming Nude Scenes
If you think watching an unexpected sex scene is awkward, just imagine how it must've felt to make it. Actually, you don't have to imagine at all — we'll tell you exactly what goes on behind the scenes when the clothes come off.
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00:00 If you think watching an unexpected sex scene is awkward, just imagine how it must've felt
00:05 to make it.
00:06 Actually, you don't have to imagine at all.
00:08 We'll tell you exactly what goes on behind the scenes when the clothes come off.
00:13 First off, it's worth noting that nude scenes are not necessarily the same as sex scenes.
00:18 After all, nudity isn't inherently sexual.
00:21 There are plenty of movie moments where characters are naked for reasons that have nothing to
00:25 do with sex, such as the scene with the showering soldiers in Starship Troopers.
00:29 Conversely, there are plenty of sexually charged scenes in movies featuring characters who
00:34 are fully closed.
00:35 The association of nudity and sex in film is largely thanks to the Hays Code, a set
00:40 of strict regulations that censored what could be shown on the big screen between 1934 and
00:45 1968.
00:46 Under the Hays Code, any nudity, regardless of sexual intent, was a big no-no.
00:52 Even after the Hays Code was dissolved, the public attitude towards nudity stuck.
00:56 In more recent years, plenty of films have found ways to utilize nudity that decouple
01:01 it from sexuality.
01:02 Take the raunchy 2023 comedy No Hard Feelings, for example.
01:06 We don't see anything particularly risque during the sex scenes themselves, but Jennifer
01:10 Lawrence ends up bearing it all during a fight with some teenagers who stole her clothes.
01:15 Nevertheless, the most notorious nude scenes in cinematic history — and the ones that
01:19 end up being the most complicated, awkward, and hilarious to film — involve sex in some
01:24 way.
01:26 Let's clear this up right away.
01:27 The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, more commonly
01:32 known as SAG-AFTRA, make it explicitly clear that actors cannot have actual sex while filming
01:37 a sexually explicit scene.
01:40 Actors should never be expected to film a scene of that nature without some kind of
01:43 physical barrier.
01:45 This means that any time you see movie characters involved in hanky-panky, it's not for real.
01:50 These sequences are typically supervised by an intimacy coordinator.
01:53 He was responsible for communicating the needs of the actors during scenes that involve sex
01:58 and nudity, as well as organizing the shooting of these scenes so they don't violate an actor's
02:02 boundaries.
02:03 An actor will outline those boundaries in a section of their contract called a "nudity
02:07 rider."
02:08 To maximize protection during sex scenes, an intimacy coordinator will often provide
02:12 performers with an object they can place between them as a barrier.
02:16 As Bridgerton actor Jonathan Bailey told Radio Times,
02:19 "It's amazing what you can do with a half-inflated netball."
02:22 If actors start to become agilely turned on, the crew needs to stop filming right away.
02:27 Intimacy coordinator David Thackeray told Backstage,
02:30 "The worst thing you can do is carry on.
02:33 Give them five minutes, then we come back into it when they're ready."
02:36 "Sometimes there's real chemistry between two people and you start feeling like it's
02:43 real."
02:45 Intimacy coordinators are a Hollywood staple now, but before they became commonplace, many
02:49 performers were expected to violate their boundaries for nude scenes.
02:53 In one particularly infamous example, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider's sex scene from
02:58 Last Tango in Paris was not consensual.
03:01 Although Brando and Schneider didn't have sex for real, director Bernardo Bertolucci
03:05 deliberately withheld from Schneider that he wanted Brando to smear butter all over
03:10 her, claiming that he wanted to capture her genuine, humiliated reaction on camera.
03:15 Another actor who chose to remain anonymous told Variety Australia that she was pressured
03:19 into doing uncomfortable things because she didn't have an intimacy coordinator protecting
03:23 her.
03:24 She recalled being asked to remove her panties during a shower scene, even though the camera
03:28 would only show her from the waist up.
03:30 What's more, in the past, Hollywood has placed a burden on actors to stop the spread of sexually
03:34 transmitted diseases.
03:36 For instance, Rock Hudson wanted to tell his Dynasty co-star Linda Evans that he had HIV,
03:41 but he was concerned that he might be fired if he announced his diagnosis.
03:45 It was the 1980s, after all.
03:47 At the time, doctors were still figuring out how HIV was spread, so Hudson feared that
03:52 he might transmit the disease to Evans during their kissing scene and felt incredibly guilty.
03:57 Hoping to protect Evans, Hudson gargled mouthwash beforehand, and Evans didn't find out until
04:02 later why he seemed so reluctant to kiss her.
04:06 When it's time to film a nude scene, intimacy coordinators will bring a whole toolbox of
04:10 garments that actors can use to cover themselves.
04:13 For one, performers can use pasties to conceal their nipples.
04:16 Actors may also put on a shabu, or hibou, a patch of adhesive fabric worn as a strapless
04:22 thong.
04:23 Intimacy coordinator Alicia Rodas told Backstage,
04:26 "We take a shabu, open it up, and put a silicone guard underneath so everyone becomes like
04:31 a Barbie doll."
04:32 "I do not have a vagina.
04:36 And he does not have a penis.
04:38 We don't have genitals."
04:39 "That's okay, yeah."
04:41 Sometimes actors will also wear elbow pads or knee pads.
04:44 This is never particularly sexy, but it is sometimes necessary if an actor needs to remain
04:49 in awkward positions for multiple takes.
04:51 Naturally, these garments are artfully omitted from the shot.
04:54 Intimacy coordinators may provide a performer with a merkin, which is essentially a wig
04:59 for pubic hair.
05:00 Alternatively, filmmakers might add the hair digitally in post-production, as cinematographer
05:05 Seamus McGarvey did for Fifty Shades of Grey.
05:07 In an interview with The New York Times, McGarvey shared,
05:10 "I wouldn't say it was one of the highlights of my career, but it certainly was one of
05:14 the most surreal scenarios."
05:17 When it comes to shooting sex scenes, it's easy to imagine that actors just wing it.
05:21 The truth is that this already happens.
05:23 With such delicate matters, nothing should be left to chance.
05:26 Jake Gyllenhaal once compared shooting sex scenes to filming a fight sequence.
05:30 Both needed to be choreographed beat by beat to make sure they ran smoothly.
05:34 Intimacy coordinators need to talk with the actors to determine exactly what each of them
05:38 feels comfortable doing.
05:40 Actors always feel more at ease before a sex scene, or any scene for that matter, if they
05:44 know that there will be no surprises.
05:46 Sometimes actors will practice first with their clothes on.
05:49 Director John Krokides explained to Vulture,
05:51 "If we rehearsed it enough times with clothes on, there would be less time having to put
05:55 two naked men in awkward positions.
05:57 That would make the actors feel self-conscious."
05:59 "He's in his underwear, you're in your underwear, and you're, um, you're sort of, you know,
06:04 dry-humping on a bed."
06:05 The camera crew also needs to rehearse, carefully planning the framing and motion of each shot
06:10 before they begin shooting.
06:12 Intimacy coordinators will occasionally use neon green tape on actors' bodies to mark
06:16 exactly where the camera is not allowed to go.
06:19 Sarah Treme, a writer on the show The Affair, summed it up for The New York Times by saying,
06:24 "We had to create sex scenes that looked like we weren't trying to cover body parts when
06:28 we were."
06:29 Sometimes actors can film sex scenes without even touching their partners.
06:33 For instance, Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac hired porn performers as body doubles for
06:37 the actors, and used CGI to combine their bodies.
06:40 Producer Louise Vette told The Hollywood Reporter,
06:43 "So above the waist it will be the star, and below the waist it will be the doubles."
06:47 Actor Stacey Martin explained to MTV that her movements were carefully choreographed
06:52 and tracked, saying,
06:53 "We would get little black dots on our bodies."
06:55 Other filmmakers have found more low-tech solutions.
06:58 John Turturro recalled on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that a sex scene between Kate
07:02 Winslet and James Gandolfini for his movie Romance and Cigarettes had to be done in a
07:07 particular way.
07:09 Winslet had sprained her ankle, and Turturro realized that the scene simply wasn't working
07:13 with Winslet trying to straddle Gandolfini, so instead he had each of them film their
07:17 parts separately.
07:19 Gandolfini had to pretend that Winslet was on top of him, while Winslet bounced on an
07:22 exercise ball.
07:23 Apparently, Winslet bounced so hard that she fell off the ball at the end of the shot.
07:27 Still, Turturro wanted audiences to believe the pair were actually in the same room.
07:32 "So I took Kate's wig, and as James was having sex, I threw Kate's wig in front of the camera."
07:40 Of course, there are still countless actors who choose not to film nude scenes for various
07:44 reasons.
07:45 Megan Fox has insisted that she won't film nude scenes anymore now that she's a mother,
07:49 since she doesn't want her children to see her in those films.
07:52 Jessica Albers says she has avoided full nudity to avoid having an awkward conversation with
07:56 her grandparents.
07:57 Penn Badgley made it a point to limit his sex scenes in the Netflix series You.
08:01 He explained that he didn't want to be typecast as a romantic lead.
08:05 He also felt that it would be more respectful to his wife if he wasn't constantly expected
08:09 to film sex scenes.
08:10 According to Entertainment Weekly, Isla Fisher pushed for her character to not appear nude
08:14 in Wedding Crashers, insisting,
08:16 "If you see a character's breast, she's no longer funny."
08:19 Unfortunately, the film's producers wouldn't listen to her.
08:23 All Fisher could do was arrange to have body doubles for the film's nude scenes.
08:26 Meanwhile, Mandy Moore shared in the DVD commentary for Chasing Liberty that she got a body double
08:31 for the skinny-dipping scene because the river looked "unsanitary."
08:35 Even Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker had a clause in her contract stating that
08:39 she'd never appear nude on the show, which goes to show that you can star in a series
08:43 of lots of sex without necessarily needing to strip down.
08:47 It's no secret that the Motion Picture Association, or MPA, is notoriously inconsistent when it
08:53 comes to rating movies.
08:55 However, it can be truly astonishing how wildly their policy toward nudity varies from film
09:00 to film.
09:01 For one, male nudity is treated as more shocking than female nudity.
09:04 While Kate Winslet's body was on full display in the PG-13 Titanic, Michael Fassbender's
09:09 full-frontal nudity in Shame earned the film an NC-17 rating.
09:14 In fact, the MPA began including the content warning of "male nudity" to accompany its
09:18 ratings, even though all instances of female nudity have been categorized as just "nudity"
09:24 without any gender-specific labels.
09:26 Aside from revealing a clear double standard and undermining the purported purpose of the
09:30 rating, the policy also suggests a bias against queer couples.
09:34 In one of the few ways that MPA has actually behaved consistently, the organization has
09:39 shown a tendency to give stricter ratings to movies with LGBTQ+ characters regardless
09:45 of the film's actual content.
09:47 The film Love is Strange, which features a middle-aged gay couple, received an R rating
09:51 despite having no sex or nudity at all.
09:54 COVID-19 changed the film industry forever, so filmmakers obviously needed to change the
10:00 way they filmed nude scenes and sex scenes going forward.
10:03 Some studios used editing tricks to make it seem like two actors were embracing, even
10:08 if they weren't in the same room together.
10:10 Others quarantined and used bare-bones crews to accomplish their visions.
10:14 For actors who felt comfortable being within six feet of their co-star but were wary of
10:18 kissing them on the lips, intimacy coordinators had to find other creative ways of evoking
10:23 the same feeling.
10:24 The scenes where it wouldn't have been safe for two actors to have such close contact,
10:27 the show The Bold and the Beautiful replaced them with lifelike inflatable dolls.
10:32 Pia Zwenger from BBC Drama even proposed the idea that actors would kiss each other with
10:36 a sheet of Perspex between them.
10:39 Even before COVID times, when all else fails, filmmakers and showrunners sometimes just
10:43 need to make do without any sex or nudity.
10:46 To compensate for this, the creators of shows like Riverdale have substituted more graphic
10:50 material with flirty dialogue loaded with innuendos.
10:54 "There's always room for one more kitty in my litter box."
10:57 Dynasty showrunner Josh Reams told The New York Times,
11:00 "The joke among the writers is that we will watch two characters say they want to have
11:04 sex and then cut to them saying, 'That was some great sex.'"
11:08 the show.
11:09 (upbeat music)
11:11 you