Filming intimate scenes can be awkward enough without one of the actors being covered head-to-toe in wicker. But according to the filmmakers behind “Wicker,” bringing Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård’s unconventional romance to life was a surprisingly enjoyable experience.
In a new interview with Refinery29 Australia, directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer opened up about the process behind the film’s steamy sequences, revealing that the scenes were filmed on a closed set with only a handful of crew members present.
“Intimate scenes on films in general actually sometimes end up being the most fun because, because you do a closed set, there’s very few people in the room, and it feels like you’re just making a short film with your friends again,” Wilson explained.
“So it was really just the two of them, our wonderful intimacy coordinator Ita O’Brien, Lol Crawley, who shot it, us and sound, and that’s it. It’s a small environment. No one’s even watching monitors in these scenes, so you’re kind of doing this secret little thing in your own little hut.”
Fischer, meanwhile, compared the process to shooting an action sequence, with the actors and filmmakers working together to choreograph the intimate moments. “It’s kind of like stunt choreography. You’re just coming up with what feels right and what makes sense. And we all had ideas, and it was kind of a fun brainstorm,” he said.
In a recent interview with Variety, Skarsgård admitted there were some initial nerves surrounding his elaborate wicker costume, which was created by New Zealand’s Weta Workshop. However, seeing Colman’s enthusiastic reaction when he first emerged in the finished prosthetics helped put those concerns to rest.
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“It was an incredible day that I’ll never forget. Putting it on and then it helped me find the physicality of the character and then stepping out of the trailer and having Olivia outside going [gasps],” he recalled. “You can see how intricate and how beautiful the work was, and the fact that once it was glued onto my face, it actually moved with my movements. It’s even better than we imagined.”
Despite the film’s suggestive marketing and abundance of sexual innuendo, the cast have stressed that there’s more to “Wicker” than its outrageous premise. “It’s not just a slapstick or sex comedy,” Skarsgård told Variety, while Colman praised the film’s ability to move between humour and heartbreak. “It can be hard to go from very silly to really heartbreaking, but because it was all done with realism, it worked better,” she said.
Based on Ursula Wills-Jones’ short story “The Wicker Husband,” the darkly comedic fantasy follows an ostracised fisherwoman (Colman) who commissions a local basketmaker (Peter Dinklage) to create her the perfect husband. The result is a man made entirely of wicker (Skarsgård), whose arrival disrupts the conventions of their medieval village.
The film also stars Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki, Richard E. Grant and Nabhaan Rizwan.
“Wicker” arrives in Australian cinemas on November 5th.