Anna Paquin gave a new interview on what it was like being directed by her husband, Stephen Moyer, during sex scenes.
Anna and Stephen met during the filming of True Blood, which ran from 2008-2014. The couple played Sookie Stackhouse and vampire Bill Compton respectively, and it was on the HBO series that Stephen first tried his hand at directing.
One of the episodes that Stephen directed was the Season 7 opener, which involved a sex scene between Anna and Joe Manganiello’s werewolf character. “Steve directed us in a rather explicit sex scene,” Anna told the New York Post. “So when you ask if it is awkward to shoot a movie with your husband, the bar for awkward is set terribly high in our household — not to mention on that show in general.”
Of course, the two got used to Anna having different on-screen romances throughout their run, with Anna joking, “By Season 3 or 4, it would be like, ‘Hi honey, who are you fucking on camera today?’”
Stephen also recalled a moment when Anna, Alex Skarsgard, himself, and another actor were walking out of their trailers in their dressing gowns. He said, “It got to a point where I was about to go to one stage and Anna and Alex to another and I was just like, ‘Go for it, guys, good luck, have a good time, make it look good.’”
The two are working together again on the new movie, A Bit of Light. Stephen said of their work together, “One of the great joys of working with Anna is that I think she’s a brilliant, genius actor. But we also have a shorthand. We don’t talk about [a scene] the night before like, ‘Right, tomorrow, this is what we’re going to do.’ We sort of skirt around that because we have a deep understanding of each other as performers and we trust each other.”
A Bit of Light is in select theaters April 5.