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The Sex Scene That Broke Me
by Viva Bianca
As many of you may know - I am no stranger to sex scenes. With sexy Sparty under my belt, my high-end escort role in X: Night of Vengeance and my healthy pelvic grind with Billy Zane in Scorned, I thought a cheeky make out sesh with Dominic Purcell in my most recent on-screen venture, Turkey Shoot Reloaded, would be a piece of cake. Boy was I wrong.
It's hard to describe the feeling of standing butt naked in a makeup trailer while three makeup artists artfully work on you. One painting my entire body with a luminescent body wash; one twirling and integrating my hair extensions; and one delicately employing lace glue as she secures the merkin to my crotch. That was the 15 minutes preceding me stepping onset to shoot the iconic fur coat, full-frontal scene in Episode 1 of Spartacus: Blood and Sand. While my legs were a little spread apart and the woman on merkin duty was on her knees pasting away, I remember thinking to myself – How would I explain this to my friends in Melbourne? The silly thing was that Jane, the head honcho of hair and makeup for Sparty, had previously worked with Geoffrey Rush and so was using the same manikin to pin my merkin to as she had Geoffrey's wig. My merkin then became know as “Geoffrey” and when I walked onset, as an attempt to lighten the mood and calm my nerves, our 1st AD was holding up a cardboard print-off mask of Geoffrey Rush's face!
Almost every sex scene has a funny memory attached to it: Andy and I giggling uncontrollably behind our masks in ep 9 (entitled “Whore”) of Blood and Sand and at the end of the day when we finally got to film the bit where we each rip each other's masks off, it took every strength I had to keep a straight face; me calling “cut!” as I ran away, dripping in blood, in response to Craig's growing boner in ep 8 of Vengeance. I guess on Spartacus, we all became so close so when we had to get down and dirty it felt entirely unthreatening. It was more like making out with your brother (Ok, that's sounds weird...)
But just a few weeks ago, as lights and cameras were being orchestrated onset and my hair stylist was “shjoojing” my hair and my wardrobe girl was securing my modesty cups, I genuinely freaked out. How is this actually going to happen? How will I bring myself to share such intimacy with someone who is in many ways a complete stranger?? It didn't help that Dom's girlfriend is one of my closest friends (by pure coincidence), and there I was about to straddle and seduce her man. To be clear – there was no actually nudity involved. But the act of passionately kissing someone who wasn't my real lover really spooked me in a way that it never has before.
It was as if for the first time I actually considered what the rest of the world probably thinks about what we actors do: How does one justify that because the kissing and rubbing and eye locking is in front of the camera it's Ok/normal/reasonable?? It's not normal!! It's so weird! Real lips are locking, real tongues are salivating, real bodies are writhing and touching, and in some cases, real penis' are rising!
I guess it's my maturing that has lead to me to analyze it as such and therefor feel a little uncomfortable with the whole ordeal. Needless to say, after a few timid takes, we got into it and gave the crew a run for their money (although, my modesty cups failed me in one take due to the HEAT in the room!) Then as Dom and I walked back to our trailers, flushed and a little shy, we both exclaimed, almost at the same time, “Well that really broke the ice!"
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