She says the scene wasn’t just a “titillating” moment thrown in by “some male executive somewhere,” before she and son Damian open up about working together on the thriller and how she made him “furious” on set.
By now you’ve seen the many headlines about Elizabeth Hurley’s son Damian directing her racy sex scene in his new film Strictly Confidential — but the pair insists it’s in there for more than shock value.
In her 22-year-old son’s directorial debut, Hurley stars as Lily, a mother who hosts her daughter’s friends at her Caribbean estate a year after the mysterious deaths of both her child and her husband. Of course, all is not as it seems and it’s not long until secrets begin to surface — including Lily’s secret love affair with one of her dead daughter’s female friends.
Before the movie’s release, much controversy has been made surrounding Hurley’s steamy sex scene with costar Pear Chiravara, specifically because it was directed by her own son. Despite it sounding like an awkward situation, both Hurleys have said it was anything but — with the actress defending the scene in question while speaking alongside Damian with TooFab.
“Well, it was a very important part of storytelling, when Mia, our protagonist, is on this quest to find out why her best friend [Hurley’s character’s daughter] killed herself,” explained the actress. “It was so integral to [the storytelling] that the actual physical filming of it wasn’t even something we talked about really. We just knew that the impact it would have on the story and the rest was just our job.”
For Hurley, she explained she has a history of staying away from projects where salacious moments are thrown in solely for shock value — stressing the importance of the scene in question to the plot of her son’s film.
“For me, when I get a script, if I feel something is put in gratuitously — which has nothing to do with storytelling — right from when I was a beginner, I’d be like, ‘I don’t get that, I don’t understand that, that’s not something I want to be part of,'” said Hurley. “It’s just thrown in, in my head, by some male executive somewhere and I’ve never been part of that. I would not have been on this, but it wasn’t. It was so integral. It was part of the storytelling, it wasn’t just a sex scene thrown in for titillation.”
She said that while “taken out of context,” the Strictly Confidential sex scene can be considered “a bit of a shocking, alarming thing,” she also believes that anyone who’s seen the full movie would understand “it’s not gratuitous” in the end.
Costar Georgia Lock also sounded off on the scene, saying she didn’t expect it to be so controversial.
“When you’re in that space, you’re at work, right? You’re just reading the script, and you’re thinking about it as the characters, and you’re thinking about him as the director … I think you’re in work mode, right?” she said. “And that’s the business. You’re actors playing a part, and you’re a director directing the actors, and that’s it.”
See what Lock also said about working with both Hurleys below:
According to Damian, he got his mother to star in Strictly Confidential after she promised him way back when he was just 8 years old that she’d star in his first feature, after he showed an early interest in filmmaking by making movies at home.
“When my mother said that to me, that was on the making of my very first short film when I was an 8-year-old despot running around with a camera,” he explained. “I probably tortured her and said, ‘If I ever make a real movie …’ and she was like, ‘Of course, of course, of course I’ll be in your film, little tiny child.’ I probably called her on it a bit faster than she thought. But Mom jumped aboard straight away, sat down, read the script and said I love it, I’d love to do it.”
Elizabeth confirmed her son “tortured” her and and her friends growing up, putting them in his movies, as they got “slicker and slicker” over time. “Whenever we went on vacation, I’d look and there’d be an extra suitcase packed with costumes, lights, everything. He had his own bullhorn at one stage, he had a director’s chair,” she added, before he said it was simply a “natural progression” for her to star in his first feature.
Hurley also signed onto the project as a producer and explained that the mother-son pair had a pretty tension-fee time making the project, despite them both wearing multiple hats on set for what was a pretty quick shoot of just 18 days.
“As a producing partner for him, we had no arguments. What I wanted to bring in as a producer was experience, somebody who had been on a movie set for more than 30 years, I knew what was what, which he didn’t know. To bring in the experience and be Team Damian. We needed that, big time and he learned a huge amount,” she explained.
“As director-actress, no disagreements at all. I have implicit trust and faith in him as to how he wants to direct a scene, edit it, deal with it in post. I am there to support, but he’s the man, he’s got that completely,” she continued. “The only time we bickered and argued was when I tried to be mummy and mum steps in and says, ‘Drink more water. Eat. It’s time to go to bed. Doesn’t that shirt need washing?’ Then he’d be furious.”
Aside from Hurley occasionally pulling her mom card, the only other awkward experience from filming was deciding how Damian would address his mother on set.
“We had this conversation. We tried for the first few scenes … I tried just to say nothing and it was too weird,” he said, before they agreed he should just call her mum. “That was the strangest thing of all, probably,” said Hurley, “but for you to call me Elizabeth would be too weird.”
Strictly Confidential is out now.
