David Duchovny said a director used a megaphone to tell him when to orgasm as he filmed the first sex scene of his career for the 1991 movie, “The Rapture.”
The film follows Sharon (Mimi Rogers), a swinger who converts to Christianity when she learns that Christians believe they will go to heaven when the world ends. She later marries a fellow swinger called Randy, played by Duchovny.
Although Duchovny made a memorable appearance in David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” in 1990, “The Rapture” was one of his first major roles before he made a name for himself as Agent Fox Mulder in “The X-Files” in 1993.
Duchovny’s experience filming his first sex scene for “The Rapture” sheds light on the haphazard way they often filmed.
Recalling shooting the scene, Duchovny said in an interview for Business Insider’s Role Play series: “Forget about intimacy coordinators. I had a director on a megaphone across the furniture store in Santa Monica Boulevard saying, ‘Come!’ and we had never spoken about this, and of course, I’m not going to come, but he wanted me to act like I was orgasming.”
Duchovny did not clarify whether director Michael Tolkin or another crew member used the megaphone. Representatives for Tolkin did not immediately respond to BI’s request for comment.
Alicia Rodis, an intimacy coordinator who works for HBO, told BI in 2022 that in modern productions, the director, a coordinator, and actors will typically discuss how to make sex scenes as comfortable as possible for those involved.
“There is a conversation that happens with the director to find out what their vision is so that we can best support that and also understand explicitly what it is they are asking from the actors,” she said.
Duchovny compared his experience on “The Rapture” to “Californication,” where he played hedonistic writer Hank Moody, who is shown sleeping with various women across seven seasons.
Because of the show’s raunchy nature, Duchovny said he was cautious about ensuring everyone was comfortable with the sex scenes and how they were shot because of “The Rapture.”
“It’s very different from what we tried in ‘Californication.’ We’re making a comedy, we’re not making porn. These are actors and these are people and everybody needs to be respected and comfortable,” he said.
“And that was always first and foremost in my mind as the lead actor on the set,” he continued. “How’s everybody going to be comfortable? How’s everybody going to be safe? And how are we going to all be in the same tone of this show? I consider that my job.”
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