Four sex scenes, four different actors in one day – that’s empowering, says star of Mary & George
Four sex scenes with four different actors in one day was “empowering”, the star of a new Sky royal drama has said.
Nicholas Galitzine plays the courtier George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, in the new period drama Mary & George, alongside Julianne Moore who plays his mother.
Advertised as “an audacious historical psychodrama about a treacherous mother and son who schemed, seduced and killed to conquer the Court of England and the bed of King James I”, the show follows the career of Villiers, who was known for being the royal favourite and lover of the 17th-century monarch.
Such seduction involved Galitzine, 29, shooting four sex scenes in one day in front of complete strangers.
The British actor told Entertainment Weekly that the experience was an “empowering” one which helped him get into character.
“There was one day where we did four sex scenes in one day,” he said.
“I was going from room to room meeting strangers and saying, ‘Hi, I am Nick, nice to meet you. OK, this is the position we’re going to be in’.”
He added: “It’s an incredibly empowering feeling. We had such a wonderful intimacy coordinator, and for the day, players who came in for these singular scenes, I hope I made them feel comfortable.
“But I’m so proud of all that work that we did together.”
Galitzine said that recreating the promiscuity of Villiers, who bedded both men and women, helped him “vicariously live through this man’s sense of power”.
Villiers was Duke of Buckingham, the king’s favourite, and was widely considered to be his lover. In one letter to Villiers, James I calls the courtier his “wife”.
Villiers was assassinated early in the reign of James’s son Charles I.
An overview of the series shows that Galitzine appears in a sex scene with Tony Curran, who plays King James, in the second episode.
In the one after he is involved in a scene with Laurie Davidson as Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, and in the next episode with Dylan Brady as Peter Carr, the Earl’s cousin.
A later scene brings Galitzine together with actress Mirren Mack who plays Lady Katherine Manners, later the Duchess of Buckingham.
The shoot made use of an intimacy coordinator, a professional who choreographs sex scenes to ensure that performers are happy.
Ewan McGregor recently revealed that he needed an intimacy coordinator for sex scenes with his own wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, when filming for the series, A Gentleman in Moscow.
He said that the coordinator was “necessary” because “it’s also about the crew, and it’s odd to be naked in front of people, it’s odd to be intimate in front of the camera”.
Some stars have refused to follow the trend, however, including Game of Thrones actor Sean Bean, who said that the over-choreographing of intimate scenes ruined performances.
He said that being overseen “would inhibit me more because it’s drawing attention to things”, arguing that “the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise”.
Galitzine, who starred in the 2023 comedy Bottoms, will appear alongside Anne Hathaway later this year in The Idea of You playing a member of a fictional boy band.
