Gemma Arterton reveals her brave response to a Hollywood director who demanded she film an unplanned sex scene
- Do YOU have a story? Send an email to tips@dailymail.com
Gemma Arterton has revealed she had to fight a top Hollywood director after they demanded she film an unplanned sex scene.
The 38-year-old Bond girl said she originally signed on for the untitled project with the understanding that the sex scene would only be heard off-screen.
But in a last-minute plot change, the director tried to insist that Gemma and her co-star film the movie, but Gemma refused.
Gemma went to tell The Radio Times that she now avoids roles that require sex scenes to be filmed, but she admitted that in the past she would never have had the courage to turn down the director for fear of being “fired”.
The star said: I remember being on set once and the director said, ‘You’re going to fuck on the bed.’ And I said, ‘No, this scene was written so we wouldn’t be on screen, so you’ll just hear the sounds.’ I would never have accepted the role if it had been filmed.
Gemma Arterton has revealed she had to fight a top Hollywood director after they demanded she film an unplanned sex scene
“He put us under pressure on the day. The other actor, God bless him, was humiliated. There were very famous people there. I said, ‘You can’t do that, I’m just not doing it.'”
“I don’t care if you think I’m difficult,” but I felt like I could only say that because I was older.
The star, who appears opposite Sir Ian McKellen in new film The Critic, continued: ‘It would have been really difficult [to say no] when i was younger.
“You could get fired, or get a terrible reputation. That was before we had intimacy coordinators, who are now the mediators — it’s a totally different landscape.”
“Anything you are not comfortable with will not happen.”
Gemma previously played an exciting film role opposite Daniel Craig in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace.
She added: ‘When I first started acting, there was a lot of nudity. You were just expected to do it. It wasn’t fulfilling, it wasn’t fun. It didn’t feel like I was flexing my acting muscles.’
The British actress returns to the swinging sixties to reprise her role as Blackpool beauty queen Barbara Parker – and the nation’s favourite comedienne, ‘Sophie Straw’.
The second season continues to explore themes of love, gender equality, LGBTQ rights and representation in comedy, set against the backdrop of the cultural explosion of the 1960s.
The first season of Funny Woman premiered in October 2023 as a six-part series based on the 2014 best-selling novel by Nick Hornby.
Read the full interview in this week’s edition of The Radio Times, on sale now
The series followed Barbara’s journey from Blackpool beauty queen to comedy star Sophie Straw, as she navigated the male-dominated sitcom industry in 1960s London.
Morwenna, the series’ writer and executive producer, said of the second season: “It’s wonderful to delve back into the world of 1960s London with the extraordinary cast and crew of Funny Woman’s second season.”
‘Thanks to the genius of Gemma Arterton as Nick Hornby’s heroine Sophie Straw, we have a whole host of new guest stars with us.’
‘We welcome great performances from Steve Zissis, Marcus Rutherford, Tim Key, Gemma Whelan, Roisin Conaty and many more… Tune in to Turn On and Don’t Drop Out.’
Read the full interview in this week’s edition of The Radio Times, on sale now.