It would be tough to do a television remake of the ’80s thriller Fatal Attraction and not have a sex scene. In fact, that is basically half of the plot anyway. Without it, you’d just be left with the “fatal” part, and we already have too many shows about that. But even though some actors are shying away from the sex of it all, Joshua Jackson still thinks that it’s an integral part of filmmaking these days, as long as it’s done right.
“The sex scenes are of great importance” Jackson recently told Variety. “Because they’re furthering the narrative. You have to believe that these people want to f*ck each other.” In reality, sex scenes are logistically challenging, which kind of takes the spark out of it, according to Jackson. But yes, making it look like two actors actually wanna get it on might be challenging, to say the least.
Fatal Attraction used intimacy coordinators on-set for scenes between Jackson and his obsessive love interest Lizzy Caplan, which has become more and more common in the last few years. Jackson said that having open communication with everyone involved is the key to a good sex scene, in addition to good directing. “God bless [director] Silver Tree for being amazing and coming at this from the female gaze. There are so many ways to tell the story of a sex scene that don’t need to be about certain pieces of a woman’s body. There are so many different ways that this can give you all of that stuff without it having to be exploitive of the women’s body.”
As for Jackson’s wife, actress Jodie Turner-Smith, he says she actually doesn’t mind the sex scene aspect of the job. “Jodie is not fussed about my sex scenes,” Jackson says, adding a personal anecdote, “The sex scenes themselves, Jodie kind of enjoys them, actually. It’s a weird thing where she’s like a voyeur. So that works! If that’s your thing — excellent.” Hey, whatever works!
Fatal Attraction premieres on April 30th on Paramount+.