Now that award season is in full swing, you're about to hear a LOT about Poor Things. Thanks to its brilliant cast (hello, Emma Stone!), wild costumes and, er, pretty intense themes, people have a lot to say on social media. But what's all this chatter around the Poor Things sex scenes?
The dark comedy follows a woman - Bella Baxter - who has been brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, who runs off with a lawyer for a whirlwind adventure, now that she's free from the shackles of her original life.
One sex scene was so controversial it had to be amended for UK law
In one particular scene, two young boys watch Bella working as a sex worker, after their father hired her to teach them about sex. But the scene had to be amended for UK viewing, after the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), who classify films and videos across the UK, deemed it too explicit for viewing.
A BBFC statement said: "We originally saw this film for advice. We informed the distributor we would be likely to classify the film 18 on condition that changes be made to one short sequence depicting sexual activity in the presence of children.
"This is in accordance with the Protection of Children Act 1978. When the distributor submitted the film for formal classification, the scene had been re-edited, and we were able to classify the film 18."
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Emma Stone says the sex scenes were "intense" but heavily choreographed
Speaking to GamesRadar+, the lead actress, who also served as a producer on the film, explained the importance of an intimacy coordinator on this film.
"[The sex scenes] were very comfortable," she commented. "It was a really small room every time, it was very few people, and we had an amazing intimacy coordinator, Elle McAlpine. In some ways, those scenes were kind of easier than the other ones because they were so choreographed and so straightforward."
On the necessity of the sex scenes - some of which include Bella discovering masturbation, and also getting up close and personal with an apple - Emma added, "even though most people are reacting to those [scenes] a lot because they feel more intense, they actually were completely fine.
"I was very prepared that those were going to occur because it felt completely necessary to Bella's journey and growth and they feel very clinical and often very funny – to me, at least."
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
Elsewhere, Emma has recently addressed the "honest" nature of the sex scenes again - this time, in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Front Row. The actor insisted that they needed to be told as "so much of this was about being true to Bella's experience."
She explained: "[The sex] is obviously a huge part of her experience and her growth, as it is, I think, for most people in life.
"So for the camera to sort of shy away from that, or to say like, 'Okay, well, we'll just cut all of this out because our society functions in a particular way,' it felt like a lack of being honest about who Bella is."
Emma then added that, while she's "not a person that just wants to be naked all the time," she is someone who "wants to honour the character" as fully as she can.
"That's part of her journey," she concluded.
Poor Things is in UK cinemas from 12th January 2024.
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Dusty Baxter-Wright is an award-winning journalist and the Entertainment and Lifestyle Director at Cosmopolitan, having previously worked at Sugarscape. She was named one of PPA’s 30 Under 30 for her work covering pop culture, careers, interiors and travel, and oversees the site’s Entertainment and Lifestyle strategy across print, digital and video. As a journalist for the best part of a decade, she has interviewed everyone from Louis Theroux and Channing Tatum to Margot Robbie and Ncuti Gatwa, while she has also spoken on Times Radio and BBC Radio. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram here.
Sophie Williams is a Freelance Journalist and Copywriter, covering everything from Fashion to Entertainment to music, Lifestyle and Features. She has interviewed a range of musical artists and authors including Alyssa Edwards, Courtney Barnett, Confidence Man, The Vaccines, Loyle Carner, Gabrielle, and John Niven, and has written for publications like Metro, Reader's Digest, ITV's Woo! and Vice’s NBGA. She is also working on a book for HarperCollins about Taylor Swift, due to be published in 2024.
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