All hail the magic of television! Insecure star Yvonne Orji, aka Molly, just went into detail about what it takes to make those awesome sex scenes and let’s just say it is not easy.
Orji chatted about Molly’s recent sex scene with Dro, her friend’s husband (hey, open marriage! Don’t judge!) and everything it took to make that happen behind the scenes. First, there’s all that legal crap beforehand. She said,
“Even before you shoot the scene, there’s so much legal stuff that happens. You get a waiver: “This is what will be shown.” You talk to the director before the day [of the shoot] — in this case, it was Tina Mabry. Tina called me and was like, ‘Here’s what I think. We won’t show this …’ I definitely have limitations on what I will and won’t show, and she has to explain to me, ‘We’re going to cover you. He’ll have his arm here, but I want shots of you kissing, or your hands grabbing the head.’ So, okay, cool.”
Next, it’s time to actually shoot the scene.
“The day of, we have a closed set, and it’s very minimalist in terms of who’s allowed in the space: one or two camera people, one or two costumers with a robe standing by, Dro has on a cock sock, which is what it sounds like, and I have on a bandeau and boy shorts. We have mostly female handlers, so that’s very comfortable for the females. On our show, the men are mostly nude. They’re the ones that get nude the most, but Issa hires women handlers to make the women feel safe. But everyone, in general, feels safe.”
And then comes the magic of editing!
“Even when I watch it I’m like, “Dang, this looks kinda real!” When he has the final scene where he goes down, he went just two inches out of frame, but it makes it look like he’s going all the way down. It’s like, “Man, TV magic is real!” The camera was just really tight on my face, and once he goes out of frame, you just pretend he’s still going down, but he literally stops right out of frame. It looks amazing, but in reality, it’s a choreographed dance, if you will.”
Yes, it did look amazing. Insecure has actually done a great job of showing sex scenes as realistic as possible — just think about when Issa had that super awkward sex with her neighbor! Hah! And they also try to address the issue of safe sex, although perhaps not as much as fans would like. Recently, many called out the show for not actually showing the characters putting on condoms, but rather just subtly showing the condom wrapper on the nightstand.
Issa took to Twitter to address this and said,
“We tend to place condoms in the backgrounds of scenes or imply them. But we hear you guys and will do better next season.”
Here’s to way more (safe) sex for Issa and Molly in the future!
