Bridgerton’ Intimacy Coordinator Reveals the 2 Trickiest Aspects of Daphne and Simon’s ‘Wildest Dreams’ Sex Montage
Bridgerton is Netflix’s sexy new TV show from Shonda Rhimes. Her first program with the streamer since leaving ABC, Bridgerton premiered on Dec. 25, 2020. Besides the over-the-top sets and detailed costumes, London’s 19th-century society set has some seriously steamy sex scenes. Most notably, the montage set to Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams.”
[Spoiler alert: The article contains spoilers for Bridgerton]
‘Bridgerton’ worked with an intimacy coordinator
The Netflix series inspired by Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton novels turned to intimacy coordinator, Lizzy Talbot, for guidance. Talbot worked with the show’s creator Chris Van Dusen, director Julie Anne Robinson, as well as the actors on the sex scenes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever spent as many days on set as I have on Bridgerton,” Talbot told The Hollywood Reporter in January 2021.
She had phone conversations with actors Phoebe Dynevor (Daphne Bridgerton) and Regé-Jean Page (Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings) before filming began. She spoke with them about what they felt comfortable with and worked with them in rehearsals to choreograph the montage.
In the show’s fifth episode when Simon Daphne get married they proceed to christen every room of their estate. The montage shows them having sex in various places, including in the gazebo, in the library, and against a statue.
Filming in the rain on ‘Bridgerton’ became a big challenge
In the same interview, Talbot discussed the not so steamy details of filming the montage. She admitted the rain presented a specific set of challenges.
“You’re working with actors that are wet; you’ve got to be very careful about wigs; you’ve got to be very careful about costume,” Talbot said, referring to the moment when Simon and Daphne run through the rain to the gazebo.
“We did a lot of work up against hard surfaces, so we’ve got to be able to protect the actors because that’s essentially a stone floor. Also, the scenes are happening in the middle of the night and even though it’s August, it’s still the U.K. so it’s absolutely freezing,” she added.
“How do we keep these actors warm during takes and in between takes? Part of that is having a fantastic costume team ready with robes and hot water bottles and standing by to swaddle them in between,” she explained.
That’s not all. The rain meant the risk of “modesty garments” coming loose.
Beds made the montage tricky to film, especially for Regé-Jean Page
“A lot of the time we were working on Regency-size beds, and although that might not seem an issue, Rege is quite tall,” Talbot said. “We’d have to be very careful about how we positioned him so that he wasn’t hanging off the end of the bed.”
The production team also had to watch out in case someone fell off the bed.
“A lot of the beds were quite narrow, so if we ever had a lot of scenes where people were rolling off each other, which we did, we had to position them really carefully otherwise it would be very easy to roll off straight onto the floor,” she said.
Plus, the beds and other props were of that time period so they had to be careful.
“We were working with sometimes original four-poster beds that we had to be quite careful with. There were often lots of very expensive original items surrounding us,” she explained.
Bridgerton Season 1 is streaming on Netflix.
