Girls star Andrew Rannells reveals he shot ‘awkward’ sex scenes with boyfriend Tuc Watkins for their new sitcom
Andrew Rannells (L) and Tuc Watkins. (Instagram/Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb)
Andrew Rannells, the film and Broadway star, revealed that he shot several sex scenes with his real-life boyfriend Tuc Watkins for their comedy series.
Chatting to host Seth Meyers on Late Night with Seth Meyers, aired Wednesday (June 24), Rannells described how he plunged the crew of the dark comedy into intense second-hand awkwardness while filming sex scenes on Black Monday.
The show details the lives of a pocket of employees working at a second-tier Wall Street trading firm in the lead up to “Black Friday” which saw stock markets crater in 1987.
Andrew Rannels describes the ‘anxiety’ he felt filming sex scene with his actual boyfriend in front of co-workers.
In season two of the show, Rannells, who plays aspiring stockbroker Blair Pfaff, ends up sleeping with congressperson Roger Harris, played by Watkins.
We won’t go into details behind the scene, because spoilers, but let’s just say the lead-up includes some, ahem, shady backdoor deals.
Chatting on the NBC news satire show, Rannells, 41, explained how he got self-conscious filming the scenes with his 53-year-old partner in front of throngs of people.
He said it’s a “new kind of anxiety” he experienced filming the scene, because while he’s done nude and sex scenes before, it was always with people he didn’t really know.
“With Tuc, it was very easy to block it and get into it,” he said.
“But then when it came time to actually filming it all of a sudden I had this realisation that I was surrounded by the crew who have now become friends of mine. I thought, I wonder if they’re thinking, ‘So that’s what it looks like, that’s what they do at home, that’s how they touch each other!'”
“So, then I got weirdly self-conscious in a different way. But all that said, it was much easier to do it with somebody [you’re familiar with].”
Rannells has a habit of ending up in numerous awkward situations in his career that involve him being nude. During his stint on Girls, he was naked numerous times.
But he described having a “total meltdown” when he met then US president Barack Obama during a theatre performance. Obama’s daughter, Malia, was with him, who interned on the HBO show.
Putting two and two together, Rannells said: “He watched the show, he knows who I am. So he’s seen me naked. That’s weird.”
Sufficiently weird, yes.
