I missed these photos, but Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley posed together at the BAFTAs. They’re the core romance on Bridgerton’s Season 2. The whole storyline is about Bailey’s Anthony Bridgerton and his love triangle between two sisters, one of whom is played by Simone Ashley. Bailey’s comments to the Sunday Times are sort of a spoiler, except we’re talking about Bridgerton and I feel like everyone knows that the characters are going to bone on-screen? Right? So Jonathan Bailey was talking about just that, and how the actors handled it technically.

Sexual tension runs high, but Bailey says what marks Bridgerton out is “the female gaze”. We see sex from the woman’s point of view — and her enjoyment of it.

Intimacy co-ordinators are on hand, “so no one goes into a scene quaking, worrying about how it will go — if you are concerned you can talk to them”. And the actors are given an agreement to sign before each scene, “consenting to which bit of skin we are going to show in each scene and where we will be touched and how. It turns sex scenes into a choreographed dance.”

Bailey thinks there are differences in how men and women approach sex on screen. “For a man it is less exposing. I wanted to make sure Simone felt safe as a newcomer on set.”

[From The Times]

That’s nice that he was conscious and respectful of Simone, not just as a woman, but as the newcomer to the Bridgerton set. The way the actors of Season 1 talked, they had a great time and they felt like family. It must have been daunting for the new actors to come into this season, especially with the expectation that they have to show skin and all of that. The rise of intimacy coordinators on film and TV productions is a great thing, I believe, for men and women.

Interestingly, in this same Times interview, Bailey is asked about his character’s poshness and privilege, and Bailey says Anthony is “emotionally stunted.” The Times asks him if there’s a parallel between that kind of characterization and the real royal family. This is what Bailey said: “There are similarities we can draw on in terms of white male privilege and power — where people are given power when they are not robust enough or emotionally intelligent enough to assume that power in a healthy way. Am I being diplomatic here? Anxiety can come with privilege.” Wow, that’s dead-on.

Photos courtesy of Instar and Netflix.