The new Sony Pictures Classics romantic drama Mothering Sunday takes place in 1924 in the English countryside, starring Josh O’Connor as the surviving son of a wealthy family and Odessa Young as the housemaid he’s been having a secret affair with for six years. But even though British period pieces are generally associated with being somewhat buttoned-up, Eva Husson’s Mothering Sunday is anything but.
We spoke to the director ahead of the film’s wide U.S. theatrical release on Friday to talk about all things sex scenes, from full-frontal nudity to wigs for private parts, also known as merkins, which Odessa Young wears during the film’s sex scenes.
The history of the merkin — a pubic hair wig — can be traced back as far as the 1450s, according to The Oxford Companion to the Body, a guide to every aspect of the human body from Oxford University Press. Back in those times, merkins were worn by sex workers to cover up sores and other unpleasantries from Syphilis.
In recent years, the merkin has become somewhat of a fashion statement, having been worn by stars like Lady Gaga and on high-fashion runways. Merkins were even used to play a prank on Jeff Bridges on the set of The Big Lebowski.
Now, merkins are commonly worn on movie sets when actors and actresses are shooting full-frontal nudity scenes, but don’t actually want to bare it all.
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That’s why Young decided to wear one in Mothering Sunday, Eva Husson tells MovieMaker.
“Odessa wanted a merkin. She got a merkin because that made her feel that she was really wearing a costume. And she was right, that’s what she needed,” says the French director.
That, and the fact that women having pubic hair was the norm in the 1920s when Mothering Sunday takes place. The merkin makes its appearance during a sex scene between Young’s character, Jane Fairchild, and O’Connor’s character, Paul Sheringham.
“We choreographed the sex bits so that they wouldn’t have to think about their body positions,” Husson says.
Choreographing sex scenes is part of Husson’s way of making the actors feel comfortable on set.
“You may want to improvise in real life, but if you place cameras in real life, a lot of it would be very clumsy and not very cinematic, which is fine, but that’s real life,” Husson says. “But in a scene, I just don’t want the actors to wonder if the angle is weird. They just have to have some freedom and have to be able to rely on the fact that I know that exactly where we are shooting, and where we’re shooting it from, is completely fine.
O’Connor doesn’t wear a merkin himself, but he does do full-frontal male nudity in Mothering Sunday.
“That’s not even something I came up with. It’s something that’s in the book already,” Eva Husson says. “It’s that question of intimacy. Sometimes, being naked is being vulnerable, and it’s not the sexiest or the most sensual visual of yourself. But that’s not what it’s about. Obviously, when you’re a man, to have a shirt and no underwear leads to a loss of dignity, as Donald’s character phrases it… and I think that’s the humor in it. It’s not about that, and it’s okay.”
Having directed French films including Girls of the Sun and Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story, Husson knew she was the right director for Mothering Sunday because she identified with the book that it’s based on by Graham Swift.
“I felt very connected to the material because it’s talking about loss and I had suffered through some personal loss. He [Swift] was also talking about the act of creation and sex and all of this just made a lot of sense,” she says. “I knew I could crack the code.”
Mothering Sunday also stars Colin Firth, Olivia Colman, Sope Dirisu, Emma D’Arcy, and Patsy Ferran. The film first premiered at Cannes in July 2021 and hits U.S. theaters on Friday, March 25.
Main Image: Odessa Young as Jane Fairchild, Josh O’Connor as Paul Sheringham in Mothering Sunday.
Image by Jamie D. Ramsay (SASC). Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
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