Kate Winslet refused to allow a sex scene from her new series, Mare of Easttown, to be edited after director Craig Zobel offered her the opportunity to have a “bulgy bit of belly” filtered out.
The 45-year-old actress is playing Detective Mare Sheehan in the new limited series on HBO, and in one of her scenes is seen getting intimate with co-star Guy Pearce.
However, when asked if she wanted it to be edited, Kate Winslet told director Craig Zobel “don’t you dare” and refused to let the scene become too inauthentic.
Speaking in an interview about her latest role, Winslet said that she thinks TV viewers are “starved” of seeing realistic, unfiltered scenes on the screen.
The 45-year-old Oscar winner said her character, Mare, is “fully functioning” and “flawed” and has a body and face that is “synonymous with her age.”
She said: “It’s nice to sense that Mare was once strong in her youth, but I didn’t want to make her an impossible, superhuman forty-something-year-old.”
She added: “Mostly women aren’t like that. We do what we can in the midst of the juggle of everything else.”
And that was not the only thing that Kate Winslet was adamant should not be edited too much.
The promotional poster for the series was sent back to the designers twice by Winslet since it was “too retouched,” and she wanted it to more accurately show how a “forty-something-year-old woman” looks.
The Titanic actress said she knew “how many lines” she has around her eyes and could recognize how filtered the photo was.
Winslet has also spoken about her plans to step back from nude scenes, saying that she thinks a point comes where people think it is predictable and say, “oh, here she goes again!”
She confessed: “I’m just not that comfortable doing it anymore. It’s not even really an age thing, actually. There comes a point where people are going to go, ‘Oh, here she goes again.”
Speaking about her character, Mare, Kate Winslet said she would “love the opportunity” to play her again and feels like she is “in mourning” after the filming came to an end.
The series, which follows Detective Mare Sheehan investigating a girl’s murder, is not expected to have a second season and plans to compete at the Emmy Awards later this year in the Limited Series category.
For many observers, it has changed the landscape.
