Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley helped choreograph their own sex scene
‘It was really cool to see them suggest how gloves come off’, intimacy coordinator said
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Your support makes all the difference.Bridgerton stars Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley were influential in preparing their own sex scene, the show’s intimacy coordinator has said.
When it returned for its second season last month, Netflix’s hit regency drama was skewered for lacking the eroticism which made the first season so famous.
*Spoilers for Bridgerton season two below*
It takes until the penultimate episode for Anthony Bridgerton (Bailey) and Kate Sharma (Ashley) to finally have sex.
However, intimacy coordinator Lizzy Talbot told Insider that the two actors knew their characters “inside out” by the time they got to filming it.
"They know exactly what their character would do in this moment, and they can bring so much to the scene because of that. It's always a gift when you've got actors who really understand their characters,” she said.
Talbot, who was also the intimacy coordinator on Bridgerton season one, said that filming sex scenes in a period drama is particularly challenging because of the size and complexity of the costumes.
“A huge part of doing any intimacy scene in the Regency period is how to get the costumes off, because they’re not easy,” she said.
“[Regency era gentry] were often dressed by other people, so all of the fastenings are at the back,” Talbot explained. “That’s always a real challenge because you’re now working with two characters who aren’t potentially used to undressing the opposite sex in that way.”
Talbot said Bailey and Ashley were specifically influential in coordinating how they would remove each other’s clothes as they were used to getting in and out of the costumes every day.
She said: "It was really cool to see them suggest how gloves come off, how they wanted to very intentionally pull down stockings, and remove shoes and take off shirts."
Bailey recently defended the drama’s lack of sex in an interview with USA Today, saying that “it would have been wrong for Kate and Anthony to have got physical any sooner than they did”.
“I think the payoff is really earned,” he added.
In season two, Anthony and Kate attempt to repress their feelings for each other as Anthony is due to marry Kate’s sister Edwina.
“What you lose in sex scenes you gain in a deeper human understanding, which hopefully enriches the world so that the future intimacy scenes won’t be the heavy feature, and won’t have to lean on them as much,” Bailey said.
Bridgerton is on Netflix now.
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