Kate Winslet has revealed she hid “in the boot of a car” to make her Mare of Easttown co-star feel comfortable during filming of a sex scene.
The British actor told Samira Ahmed’s How I Found My Voice podcast in February that she stepped in to support actor Angourie Rice, 20, while they worked on the new series, which began on Sky Atlantic this week.
Winslet said that the scene, between Rice and another actor, did not require nudity, so an “intimacy coordinator” was not called upon. Intimacy coordinators oversee the filming of scenes of a sexual nature, to ensure cast and crew are comfortable.
“I just got the sense that she was nervous,” Winslet said. “I said to her, ‘I’m going to be around for this, I’m going to stay, I won’t leave the set’. She said, ‘Thank god Kate, thank you so much!’”
The scene took place in a vehicle, so Winslet planted herself where the camera couldn’t see her.
“I ended up being in the boot of the car,” she explained. “I knew it would make them feel better to have that one person who would be able to put their hand up and say, ‘Actually we need to cut now, is everyone feeling OK?’”
Winslet and Rice play mother and daughter in Mare of Easttown, a murder mystery which The Independent called “at times self-consciously novelistic” with “sprinklings of Broadchurch and Happy Valley”. Guy Pearce, Evan Peters and Jean Smart also star.
In October, Winslet revealed that she scheduled the filming of a sex scene between her and her Ammonite co-star Saoirse Ronan so it could coincide with Ronan’s birthday.
“I just wanted her to have, frankly, a great memory in her film life, regardless of how the scene played out or the movie turned out,” Winslet said.
Mare of Easttown airs Mondays at 9pm on Sky Atlantic.
