Nicole Kidman Says Filming 'Big Little Lies' Sex Scenes Left Her "Humiliated" and "Ashamed"

"I was just lying there, sort of broken and crying."

By Mehera Bonner

Jun 29, 2017

HBO

Anyone who watched HBO's Big Little Lies knows how disturbing, graphic, and violent the sex scenes were between Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard—and apparently they had a deep impact on the actress. In a recent interview with W Magazine, Kidman explained that the sex scenes/fight scenes—which were often unrehearsed–"felt dangerous and really upsetting," and that she'd go home afterwards "ashamed."

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"When I would go home, I would feel ashamed, and that's the same emotions and the same feelings that Celeste was having, so we were very much parallel in the feelings," she said, later adding, "I felt very exposed and vulnerable, and deeply humiliated at times. I mean, I remember lying on the floor in the bathroom at the very end when we were doing the scenes in episode seven, and I was lying on the floor and I just wouldn't get up in-between takes."

HBO

She continued, "I was just lying there, sort of broken and crying, and I remember at one point Jean-Marc coming over and just sort of placing a towel over me, because I was just lying there in half-torn underwear and just basically on the ground with nothing on, and I was just like [gasps]."

In a previous interview with Vogue, Kidman said her husband Keith Urban was disturbed by the bruises she incurred while filming: "I had to take things like Advil because I was being thrown around physically. I was really bruised. At one point Keith was like 'I'm going to take a photo of your back because it's covered in deep, massive bruises.' He was devastated seeing it, but then he would say, 'But I have an artist wife!'"