Olivia Colman shared that the one thing she’s afraid of when it comes to acting is performing sex scenes because it feels like she’s cheating on her husband.
“Pretending to have sex … I don’t like it,” Colman told Amy Poehler on the comedienne and actress’s podcast series “Good Hang with Amy Poehler.” “Even when they go, ‘You can wear your jeans’ or a cushion between you. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that.”
And it’s not just sex scenes, Colman shared she’ prefer to avoid showing “any skin” at all. However, she and Poehler both applauded the actors who take on the task comfortably.
“The people that are good at it, I’ll watch them all day long, and they’re comfy,” Poehler said. “But the on-screen orgasm …”
“No, absolutely not … Thank God for intimacy coordinators,” Colman added, mentioning that she’s been told to just imagine the sun is hitting her face when she’s supposed fake an orgasm.
The conversation came about as a question from Colman’s “The Roses” costar Benedict Cumberbatch, who’d asked the actress what scared her about her job.
“Well, you got your answer, Ben,” Poehler said.
Colman said she loved working with Cumberbatch, and noted that the actor’s innocence often appeared on set.
“We had so much fun, but when it started to get a little bit more cruel to each other, he did go, ‘Can we pause for a minute? Are we OK?’” she explained. “‘Yes, Ben, it’s all pretend. It’s all OK.’ He’s so in it. It’s just lovely, but I felt like I wanted to hold his hand a lot and go, ‘We’re good.’”
Colman is just one of the many stars that have opened up about how vulnerable sex scenes tend to be. During an interview with The I Paper, “The Girlfriend” star Olivia Cooke also praised intimacy coordinators for caring for actors during intimate scenes.
“It’s amazing to me that people had to just fudge their way through those scenes before those people existed,” said, adding that that certain sequences can place actors in “really precarious and vulnerable situations.”
