Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson: The peril of nude TV scenes being screenshot – and put online forever

As flame-haired beauty Demelza in Poldark, her sex scenes with co-star Aiden Turner were purposefully restrained.

Now Eleanor Tomlinson, 31, has revealed why she is so reluctant to strip off for her art, saying: ‘You’re opening yourself up to a screenshot… and those pictures end up online forever.’

Eleanor, featured in a publicity shot for Channel 4’s new erotic thriller The Couple Next Door, says young actors should not be forced into nude scenes.

She says she fought back against producers who wanted her to expose more flesh while filming her character’s sexual encounters.

Eleanor Tomlinson spoke about the dangers of nude TV, pictured here in a scene with Keira Knightley

Eleanor Tomlinson stars in Channel 4’s The Couple Next Door

‘There are so many more interesting ways you can show this. I’ve done nudity before, but for me it’s based on each project and how necessary I find it,” she adds in an interview to promote the six-part series, which starts tomorrow.

“And I didn’t feel like it was for this new series. I mean, there was a conversation where they pushed it and the harder they pushed it, the more I felt like saying, ‘No, you’re just not being creative here.’

‘You don’t have to show everything, because that ultimately disrupts everyone’s concentration.’

Eleanor, who says she advocated for Demelza to have her iconic red hair in Poldark, rather than the dark hair depicted in Winston Graham’s novels, appears as Evie in the new drama. She moves with her partner Pete (played by Sam Heughan) to a suburb of Leeds, where she ends up next to a sexually liberated couple.

She is not the first actress to speak out about ‘gratuitous’ nudity on screen. Game Of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, who appeared in explicit sex scenes for the fantasy drama’s first season, later revealed she would ‘cry’ before filming.

She later turned down the lead role of Anastasia Steele in the film adaptation of the erotic thriller 50 Shades Of Gray due to the amount of nudity required.

However, London-born Eleanor, who married her rugby player boyfriend Will Owen last year, claims nudity was ‘necessary’ for her character in the 2018 film Colette, based on the life story of French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, played by Keira Knightley. .

“But I still haven’t found a role since then,” Eleanor told a newspaper.

“There’s an element of self-preservation in it, because you open yourself up to a screenshot and pause, and those photos go online and they’re going to be there forever… for me it all has to be in character.” driven.’