Six of the most powerful women on TV are talking about sex in the new issue of The Hollywood Reporter.
“I was never the actress asked to be the hot girl who took her clothes off on her first day of work,” 37-year-old Maggie Gyllenhaal told the magazine. “I was never objectified that way. But in ‘The Honorable Woman,’ my character Nessa is so controlled, I wanted the sex to be animal. Unfortunately, it was the BBC and so it couldn’t be totally animal.”
She added, “Also, I wanted to show what a woman my age actually really looks like. I am much more turned on when I see people’s bodies that look like bodies I recognize.”
Gyllenhaal was interviewed alongside Jessica Lange, Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, Lizzy Caplan and Ruth Wilson about their TV roles that have them all in the running for an Emmy this year.
“On ‘Masters [of Sex],’ there are women of all ages and body types. It’s very equal-opportunity,” Caplan added.
Davis, who plays sexualized law professor Annalise Keating in “How to Get Away With Murder,” said, “It’s courageous because even when you see sex scenes in the theater, it’s like, ‘OK, she’s been to the gym four times today.'”
Despite how comfortable they look during the sex scenes on TV, they have all battled with self-confidence and nerves:
- Lizzy Caplan: “There was a scene last season where I take my robe off, I’m naked and then transition into locked-eye [with Michael Sheen’s character], full-on masturbation from beginning to end. I remember being in my trailer before that scene and thinking for the first time since the show started: ‘I really don’t want to go out there and do this.'”
- Taraji P. Henson: “My first time being nude was my first movie, ‘Baby Boy.’ I knew the scene was coming. I remember thinking, ‘Taraji cannot be in that room.’ So I literally went home and stripped down naked, stood in front of the mirror and looked at every morsel of my body, and I dealt with it. The next day, I was so free. I was so ready.”
- Ruth Wilson: “I had only done one sex scene before ‘The Affair.’ Dominic [West] and I are really insistent that those scenes in the show have a narrative. It can’t just be a normal generic sex scene … There are assumptions that women are always the focus of titillation. And I wanted my contract to say: ‘For every female orgasm, there had to be a male orgasm.'”
- Maggie Gyllenhaal: “I think sex in film is so interesting. It’s uncomfortable to take your clothes off in front of people you don’t know, but it can be an opportunity for really interesting acting. I’m 37, and I’ve had two babies, and I’m really interested in nudity now.”