Florence Pugh once revealed that the camera broke while she was filming a sex scene with Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer and produced quite the awkward moment.
If you’ve seen the movie, then you’ll know there’s a moment where Oppenheimer (Murphy) and Jean Tatlock (Pugh) start getting it on.
There’s plenty of sex in movies but the process of committing a bit of cinematic copulation to film is not quite as alluring as the end product is aiming to be.
You’re seeing two people pretending to boink while a film crew are huddled around recording them, or as Samuel L Jackson famously described it, you’ve got ’15 guys standing around, one of them with a sandwich’.
There’s never a good time for technical issues to kick in, but according to People, there was a screening of Oppenheimer where Pugh did a Q&A where she revealed that one of the cameras broke right in the middle of filming a sex scene.
Bad news, the camera broke. Good news, Florence Pugh got to pick someone’s brains about how cameras work. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
“In the middle of our sex scene, the camera broke. No one knows this, but it did – our camera broke when we were both naked and it was not ideal timing and there weren’t many cameras,” she said.
“So Cillian and I are in this room together, and it’s a closed set, so we’re both holding our bodies.”
She explained that one camera was already being fixed and director Christopher Nolan had to ask if there was another one anywhere.
However, Pugh took it as a moment to do a spot of learning about how cameras work, saying she decided to ask the repair crew about the technical details.
She said: “This camera surgeon comes into the room and starts and I’m like, ‘well, this is my moment to learn’.”
“So, tell me, what’s wrong with this camera?”
It’s not the only sex scene mishap Pugh has been involved with. (Marleen Moise/Getty Images)
At least she was able to turn a technical hiccup into a learning experience.
One of Pugh’s co-stars has also spoken about filming a scene with her in another movie where they didn’t hear anyone say ‘cut’.
She recently filmed the movie We Live In Time with Andrew Garfield where their characters have a bit of a tryst.
While filming that scene, it was a closed set, and Garfield said it was just the two actors ‘and the camera operator who’s a lovely man called Stuart’.
He said things were going alright while filming the scene when he looked up and saw Stuart standing in the corner of the room and facing away with the camera down, seemingly waiting for them to stop.
Whoops.
Featured Image Credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images / Marleen Moise/Getty Images