“You do feel exploited when you are a woman and you are having to perform fake sex on screen.”
To a non-actor, mimicking any degree of intimacy while cameras are rolling seems difficult for a whole host of reasons. Claire Foy is a two-time Emmy winner, but after building an extensive resume, she still considers filming sex scenes “the grimmest thing you can do” on screen.
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Most of us probably know Claire best from The Crown‘s earlier seasons, where she preceded Olivia Colman as the younger Queen Elizabeth and earned a number of prestigious accolades for her performance.
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Now Claire is starring in another historical drama. She leads the cast in an upcoming miniseries from BBC One and Amazon Studios called A Very British Scandal, which will focus on UK socialite Margaret Campbell’s widely publicized divorce from the Duke of Argyll in the 1960s.
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Margaret’s rumored affairs, plus a sexist media culture that vilified her throughout the infamous divorce case, are central to the new series’ plot. While appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour podcast to talk about the show, Claire explained that she agreed to film intimate scenes because she believed they were integral to the story.
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But she also noted how participating in those scenes, especially as a woman, felt exploitative to some extent nonetheless.
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“It’s a really hard line because basically you do feel exploited when you are a woman and you are having to perform fake sex on screen,” said Claire. “You can’t help but feel exploited.”
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“It’s grim — it’s the grimmest thing you can do,” she added, although the actor did commend intimacy coordinators for working to facilitate those moments behind the scenes.
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“You feel exposed,” she continued. “Everyone can make you try to not feel that way, but it’s, unfortunately, the reality.”
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“My thing was that I felt very strongly that it had to be in it, but I wanted it to be female,” Claire added. “I did not want it be that sort of awful climactic sexual experience you often see on the cinema screen.”
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Conversations about misogyny in Hollywood are fairly prominent. But it’s less often that we hear insight into the effects of voyeurism and objectification on women who are tasked with acting out sex and intimacy, so there are definitely important points to learn from Claire. You can listen to her full podcast interview here.
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