Kaley Cuoco is recalling just how awkward her first sex scene was.
The "Big Bang Theory" star stunned fans when she shed her girl-next-door image as Penny from the beloved sitcom and transformed into an alcoholic flight attendant who falls into bed with a man she just met, played by "Games of Thrones" actor Michiel Huisman, in the HBO Max's series "The Flight Attendant." It is a raunchy scene, and Cuoco admitted during The Hollywood Reporter's comedy actress roundtable that she felt completely out of her element.
"I had never done any sort of sex scene ever, and I had one in 'Flight Attendant' with Michiel. He'd been in 'Game of Thrones,' so he'd done all these scenes, and I just had no idea. When they called 'cut,' I'd be hovering over him like I was on a toilet," she said.
"I'm like, 'I'm not touching anything, I'm not looking at anything,'" she continued. "I didn't know what to do. He was like, 'You're acting so weird, you're making this way weirder than it needs to be.'"
Cuoco, who plays Cassie Bowden in the show, also spoke openly about the sex scene during an interview with USA Today, revealing that she contorted herself above Huisman between takes.
"Network 8 o'clock TV is a little different than HBO Max all hours of the night. I had scenes like that on 'Big Bang,' but this was like a true sex scene. I told Michiel, 'I've never done this before. Have you done it before?' He goes, 'Yeah, like 30, 40 times.' And I was like, 'WHAT?' " Cuoco said.
"So when they called action, I still wasn't really giving my all. Michiel finally goes, 'It looks like you're hovering over a public toilet. What are you doing?' I'm like, 'I don't know what I'm doing.' So he had to awkwardly teach me how to have fake sex," she added.
Playing the role of a character so far removed from the sweet Penny came with a fair amount of pressure. Cuoco was pushing to have Cassie portrayed as a woman in a far messier state than the network had intended. She wanted the character to drink more, but there was the risk of alienating audiences. Cuoco managed to strike the balance, and won viewers over, but she previously admitted to Entertainment Weekly that she was nervous.
"There were nights where I would go into my apartment in New York and cry. Like, 'Oh my God, everyone's going to hate this,'" she said. "It was a lot of up-and-down emotions, because this project lived or died with me."
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