American Gods features Muslim characters in explicit gay sex scene
TV series American Gods has aired an explicit sex scene in which a Muslim character has gay sex with a Jinn.
The new TV show, which airs on cable channel Starz in the US, is based on Neil Gaiman‘s 2001 fantasy novel American Gods.
The show’s third episode, which aired last night, introduces gay Muslim character Salim, played by Omid Abtahi.
In the episode, Salim – who has just moved to New York City – strikes up a connection with a mysterious taxi driver played by Mousa Kraish, who is later revealed to be a mystical Jinn.
The pair’s relationship is explored in some detail, with a sex scene between the two men, described by some critics as the most explicit to ever air in a TV drama.
The scene is pioneering in featuring two gay characters of Middle Eastern descent.
Adbahi and Kraish sat down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss filming the scene, alongside out showrunner Bryan Fuller.
Speaking to EW, Abtahi explained he has played gay characters in the past.
He said: “This is not my first gay sex scene… I am a veteran of this genre!
“For me it was better, it made it a little bit easier having known Mousa for ten years.
“I got in shape when we first shot it, and two months later I was mid chocolate chip cookie when I got Brian’s email saying, ‘we need to shoot this again’.
“Both times it felt great and then watching the final product it’s just so beautiful. It’s so touching and beautiful, with the special effects and the music.”
Fuller said: “We want it to be a genuine relationship that the audience and the characters are invested in.
“We are so inspired by Mousa and Omid that we just started spinning more stories for them for season two. If you’re inspired by actors you want to make sure you dig out more room for them and absolutely, with these two, we want everybody to root for Salim and the Jinn. ”
Explaining the reshoot, he said: “As a gay man I was looking at their positions and saying, I think my exact words were, unless Musa has a 12-inch candy cane cock that can f**k around corners, his dick is not getting in his butt!”
He added: “It’s such a beautiful scene and it seems a shame to talk about the basics of making it.”
Fuller also revealed that an early cut of the scene featured some accidental graphical enhancement on behalf of the Jinn.
He said: “Our visual effects guy, for some reason, he got into his head that the penis should be 11 inches long.
“In motion, it was giggle-inducing because it had a sense of gravity to it! It was impressive.”
American Gods author Neil Gaiman also opened up about penning the original scene.
He told EW: “I think part of it may have come from reading the whole of One Thousand and One Nights… I think it was the first thing that I’d ever read where I went, you know, there’s an awful lot of this sort of homoeroticism in the Arabian Nights.
“It was this really interesting part of Arab culture that I had never thought about, that I was learning about. And that had sort of stuck. And at that point, I wanted a genie in American Gods…and, I think it’s going to be a gay relationship… and after that it just kind of wrote itself.
“It probably wouldn’t have written itself quite so sexily, had I not read lots of Edmund White and Armistead Maupin and gone, ‘Okay, well, I can do that!’.”
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