Daniel Radcliffe Was Once Worried About His First Sex Scene With Teresa Palmer
For Daniel Radcliffe, transitioning out of the Harry Potter franchise meant experimenting with aspects of filmmaking he hadn’t before. One such aspect he was new to was doing sex scenes, which the young actor admitted he dreaded engaging in.
Daniel Radcliffe once revealed he met his girlfriend while filming a sex scene for ‘Kill Your Darlings’
By now, Daniel Radcliffe is a bit of a veteran actor. Having acted in his fair share of films since Harry Potter, the superstar is much more comfortable with sex scenes nowadays. Fairly recently, Radcliffe even explained how filming a sex scene in Kill Your Darlings led to a real-life romance with girlfriend Erin Drake.
“It’ll be a hell of a story to tell our kids one day because of what our characters do with each other,” Radcliffe said in an interview with People TV. “Our characters are meeting and flirting with each other, so there is this kind of sweet record of us just meeting for the first time and flirting.”
Daniel Radcliffe was worried about his first sex scene with Teresa Palmer
One of the first projects Radcliffe did after the Harry Potter franchise was December Boys. In the film, which focuses on foster children hoping to be adopted, Radcliffe engages in a sex scene with Discovery of Witches star Teresa Palmer. He admitted the scene was clumsy, but he was proud of it since it was supposed to be.
“It’s so totally mal coordinated when she asks him to kiss her neck and play with her tits at the same time,” Radcliffe told The Guardian. “It’s that first-time experience when you’re like, ‘OK. What’s this hand doing? What’s that hand doing?’ Trying to coordinate all those things at once the first time is an absolute nightmare. What I quite liked about that scene was that it’s not sexy. It’s a sex scene that’s not sexy. It’s clumsy and sweet.”
At the same time, because Radcliffe found Palmer attractive, he was a bit concerned about his interaction with her.
“Kissing someone on camera is just not sexy, no matter how attracted to them you are. And Teresa is beautiful, so I was … I was sort of worried about … you know,” he continued. “But it was OK. No matter how beautiful they are, when you’re surrounded by crew who are taking measurements on the focus and making sure you’re in the right light, it becomes totally clinical. And clinical is not a word I would associate with any good sexual experience.”
Daniel Radcliffe discovered gay sex was painful in ‘Kill Your Darlings’
Kill Your Darlings was a unique film for Radcliffe. It’s not only the film that introduced him to his girlfriend, but it was also where he filmed an impactful gay sex scene. For Radcliffe, playing a gay character in a romantic drama wasn’t an issue.
“I don’t think there’s any difference between how one falls in love,” he told Flaunt (via Closer). “People express love differently, person to person, but it’s not gender or sexuality-related. The only difference it made was obviously the actual sex scene, of course.”
But Radcliffe did need a bit of instruction when it came to actually filming gay sex scenes.
“I was talked through it by the director. He would be telling me what I would be feeling in each take. Basically, gay sex, especially for the first time, is really f****** painful,” Radcliffe continued. “And [director John Krokidas] said that he had never seen that portrayed accurately on film before. He wanted it to look like an authentic loss of virginity.”
