Jessica Chastain Reveals How She Ensured ‘Balanced’ Nudity With Oscar Isaac In New Show
Jojo Whilden/HBO
The lifelong friends opened up about their surprising nude scenes in their new HBO series during an interview on ‘The View.’
Jessica Chastain shared one of her requirements regarding nude scenes in her new HBO series Scenes From A Marriage in an interview with The View on Friday October 15. The 44-year-old actress revealed that she made sure the show’s director kept the amount of naked shots “balanced” between her and her co-star Oscar Isaac, 42, while they were making the critically-acclaimed TV show.
Jessica made the comment, after View co-host Sunny Hostin asked Oscar about his full-frontal nude scene, which caught the internet’s attention. Oscar joked about how he was “feeling objectified” after Jessica was asked a question about the original 1973 Swedish miniseries that Scenes From A Marriage is based on, and how the gender roles were swapped for the updated American take on the series. “She gets all the deep questions? What the hell is going on here?” he quipped.
Oscar explained that he didn’t fully realize that the nude scene was included when he first saw it. “I was surprised because I didn’t know that was going to happen. You get sent the stuff to look at, and be like, ‘Okay, I’m fine with that,’ but I saw it on a laptop quite dark and I didn’t notice what was happening down there, and it was a surprise when I started seeing all these things of ‘It’s full-frontal,’ like, ‘No! What’re you talking about?’ I saw it, and clear as day on the big TV there,” he said.
After Oscar spoke about his scene, Jessica said it was part of her requirements for the show that the male and female nudity was kept even. “I said to Hagai [Levi] who wrote and directed the series—in the very beginning, I said, ‘I’m comfortable with all of the nudity, but any part of my body that you show, you’re going to have to show the same with Oscar.’ There’s a shower scene that I have in episode two, and you see my body. So now, you see his body. So for me, I wanted it to be balanced,” she said.
Earlier in the interview, the hosts asked about doing such a personal (and intimate) series, when the two are very good friends and have been for so long. The co-stars mentioned that they’d gone to school together (both studied at Juilliard), and Oscar made a few jokes about already being very familiar with each other. “We were theater kids, and you know, theater kids, they’re always naked,” he said, before The Eyes of Tammy Faye star hilariously clapped back: “I was never naked in theater class!” She also mentioned it again when talking about their 20-year friendship. “We went to college together. I did not take a naked theater class with Oscar,” she said.