Stars of 'Blue Is The Warmest Color' Reflect On 'Embarrassing' Lesbian Sex Scenes

The French lesbian coming-of-age filmBlue Is The Warmest Color has been greeted by international acclaim for its raw, up-close storytelling, winning the prestigious Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, and earning rave reviews from critics and fans alike. 

The film was also slapped with an NC-17 rating in the U.S. for its almost uncomfortably intimate and unprecedented 10-minute graphic lesbian sex scene between the film's two main characters, Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Emma (Léa Seydoux). 

Now the film's stars are opening up about the apparently hellish process of shooting the movie with director Abdellatif Kechiche, a virtual slavedriver of a director whose shoot dragged on for nearly six months to complete the three-hour film. Speaking with The Daily Beast's Marlow Stern, both actors were up-front about not wanting to work with Kechiche ever again, despite the cinematic masterpiece the team created. 

"The thing is, in France, it's not like in the States," said Seydoux. "The director has all the power When you're an actor on a film in France and you sign the contact, you have to give yourself, and in a way you're trapped. 

Exarchopoulos agreed, noting that the two leads had met only once before launching into a brutal 10-day shoot to create the film's graphic sex scenes.

"I didn’t know [Léa] in the beginning," explained Exarchopoulos. "And during the first sex scene, I was a little bit ashamed to touch her where I thought I wanted, because he didn’t tell us what to do. You’re free, but at the same time you’re embarrassed because I didn’t really know her that well."

Both women used the word "embarrassed" to describe how they felt about the visceral, raw, and intimate sex scenes. The actors even described the prosthetic sex organs they were each outfitted with, apparently modeled upon the actors' actual lady-bits. 

"We had fake pussies that were molds of our real pussies," said Seydoux. "It was weird to have a fake mold of your pussy and then put it over your real one. We spent 10 days on just that one scene. It wasn’t like, 'OK, today we’re going to shoot the sex scene!' It was 10 days."

Read the full interview at The Daily Beast. 

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