Former “Doctor Who” actor Christopher Eccleston revealed in a recent interview that he was once falsely accused of “copping a feel” while filming a sex scene with someone he described only as an “A-list actress” who was “not Nicole Kidman.”
Eccleston, who played the 9th Doctor in the popular British sci-fi series, gave no other hints as to who the actress might be, telling The Independent only that he was relieved it had happened prior to the #MeToo movement and the fallout surrounding disgraced film executive Harvey Weinstein.
“I did a sex scene with an A-list actress – not Nicole Kidman, who was brilliant – and she implied, in front of the crew, that I was copping a feel. Because she didn’t like me,” he said, explaining that he knew he was “fortunate that happened to me before the Harvey Weinstein stuff came to light, so I wasn’t put in the stocks for it. But I’ve never felt more betrayed by a fellow actor than I did that day.”
“I have to say to you that I would sooner have put my hands in a food blender than copped a feel of that person,” he added. “It was an abuse of power, what she did. I don’t think that would have happened with an intimacy coordinator on set. I could have been accused of all manner of things.”
Part of the reason Eccleston felt so betrayed was that he had always felt it was part of his responsibility — both as an actor and as a man — to make sure that the actress was comfortable in any sex scene they did together.
“As a bloke, as a young man, you walk onto the set and see the majority of people in the crew are male,” he said. “Then there’s a beautiful woman who’s naked. So unless you are a complete a***hole, you just continually ask her: are you comfortable? Is there anything I can do?”
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That experience coupled with the #MeToo movement, he said, has made him appreciate the addition of an intimacy coordinator on set. “I’m here to protect you too, Chris,” he quoted one intimacy coordinator as saying.
“I’d not thought about that. You don’t think that maybe somebody’s copping a look at you. You just don’t, not from a working-class northern British background,” the actor continued. “I was born in ’64, when men were really not the objects of desire as far as I knew.”
Eccleston’s interview comes along with the recent season four premiere of HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country” — in which Eccleston stars alongside Oscar-winning actress Jodie Foster.