Cast members of the Netflix hit Hollywood arrived on set to be told they were going to be fitted for prosthetic penises, one of its stars has revealed.
The new series, from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, is an alternative history of the film industry set in the years after the Second World War. It imagines a Hollywood in which gay actors and actors of colour flourish instead of being silenced.
Speaking to the live-streamed YouTube series Stars in the House, actors Jeremy Pope and David Corenswet revealed that the series was written as far more explicit than it ultimately proved to be, with plans to include full-frontal scenes that would require the use of prosthetic appendages.
Corenswet recalled a conversation with Pope in which he asked him if he planned on wearing a prosthetic. “I thought he meant a face prosthetic,” Corenswet said.
Pope recalled: “My first day on set – it’s fine, I did the camera test, it’s all good. Then it’s like, ‘Hey, Jeremy, let us know when we can fit you for your prosthetic’. And I’m like, ‘Ooh, does [my character] get beat up? What am I getting?’
“Then he’s like, ‘Oh, you don’t know? Okay, let me have someone get in contact with you.’ Then I started putting the pieces together of ‘Oh, we're not talking about anything above the waist of a prosthetic.’”
Corenswet said that he didn’t believe the prosthetics were ever made, with the scenes in which they were due to be featured ultimately not filmed.
Co-star Darren Criss also revealed that the original scripts for the series were so explicit that he “clutched [his] pearls” over them.
“There’s no f***ing numbers on the dial anymore for how raunchy it was,” he said. “They dialled it back severely to focus more on the heart and the hope… The descriptions of stuff were uber-salacious. The vibe was super-charged sexuality.”
Hollywood, which also stars Laura Harrier and Patti LuPone, has received mixed reviews since it dropped on Netflix. In its two-star review, The Independent called it a “big shiny mess”.
