Bridgerton and Sex Education star Simone Ashley has revealed some saucy — or maybe slimy — deets about prepping for on-screen sex scenes.
In an interview with the LA Times’ The Envelope podcast, Ashley said the Sex Education cast were shown vids of animals boning to help inspire sex scenes. And one of those critters was in fact the humble snail.
During the interview, Simone Ashley was asked about how her role as Olivia in Sex Education helped her prep for intimate scenes on Bridgerton.
According to Ashley, the prep for Sex Education was really “stripped to the basics”.
“It was such a great platform moving forward in my career, like for shows like Bridgerton where there are a lot of intimate scenes,” Ashley said.
“In Sex Education we had like a sex intimacy workshop where we completely broke the ice and you know, anything that was said, it was the most embarrassing or the most vulnerable but it was a safe, intimate space.”
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She then explained how exactly the snails come in to the equation.
“We explored the movement of different animals to kind of portray different paces or different sexualities or how sensual something could be,” Simone Ashley said.
“For example, we look to how snails mate and when snails mate, they actually produce a plasma that intertwines. So if it was a really sensual, slow kind of scene we’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s like the snail’.
“And it’s super like the plasma, like falling like honey.”
I never thought I’d find snails sexy but hey, here we are.
She also said certain scenes would be inspired by how animals like dogs or chimpanzees mate.
“So this kind of scene we’re going to make it very funny and quirky and just like silly and like, let’s think of like, this animal,” Ashley continued.
“We would kind of focus on the other things around and then treat it like a dance and make it very character driven.”
Simone Ashley also shouted out the work of the “amazing” intimacy coordinators who worked on the show. She said in both Bridgerton and Sex Education the sex scenes were taken really seriously, with “rehearsals and conversations”.
Ashley spotlighted a Zoom meeting she and her Bridgerton co-star slash onscreen love interest Jonathan Bailey had with their intimacy coordinator and director.
“We wanted to find out what makes sense for the scene, what isn’t performative, what’s truthful, what’s authentic,” she said.
“All these different ideas and then you get excited about it. Then we do have the conversations of ‘no, I’m not really comfortable with that, feels a bit vulnerable for me, can we make sure that this is in place?’”
Ultimately, she said she felt “very comfortable and very confident and safe”. There’s truly nothing sexier than a sex scene where you know the actors are all being properly looked after.
Maybe we should all be looking to snails for some spicy bedroom tips. Though definitely check how your partner feels about slime and shells first.
