Penn Badgley's Wife Defends His Decision to Stop Filming Sex Scenes
How Penn Badgley Really Felt About Filming Sex Scenes for ‘You’
Penn Badgley's wife Domino Kirke is shutting down gossip.
Three years after the Gossip Girl alum vowed to stop filming sex scenes, Kirke—who works as a doula—refuted rumors that she influenced his decision.
"I continue to get DMs about this thing that happened about three years ago, when my husband decided that he didn't want to do intimacy scenes anymore." she began in a Sept. 28 Instagram video. "Meaning: He didn't want to have sex. He didn't want to kiss. He didn't want to do any of that, which was really major in his industry."
"So, when he decided he didn't want to do this anymore, I was super happy for him, very proud of him because I understood how major it was," continued Kirke, who shares a 6-year-old son and 12-month-old twins with Badgley, as well as a teenage son Cassius with ex Morgan O'Kane. "It's just relational hygiene, and I strive to practice this in my career as a doula."
The 42-year-old went on to note that she's "not just Penn Badgley's wife."
"I also do things like support people in making these kinds of decisions for themselves and their careers," Kirke added. "I want to say, to those of you who still DM me about my husband deciding to do this for himself and his mental health, get over it."
Badgley first raise eyebrows when he cited his relationship with Kirke as one of the reason why he wasn't interested in performing sex scenes anymore, sharing that "fidelity in every relationship, especially in a marriage, is important to me."
"If you have a partner," he said during a 2023 appearance on Andy Cohen Live, "and you wanna be with your partner and you have to do this with another person, frankly, for me, it's just not my desire."
However, the 39-year-old later added that he was "not interested" because choreographing certain details in sex scenes made for unrealistic chemistry between the actors.
Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
“It’s just not the way sex happens, the falling against the wall and grasping at each other’s clothes, all this stuff,” he told The Guardian in 2025. “There’s no time for condoms, there’s no time for conversation. There’s no time for awkwardness, for real connection."
But that's not to say Badgley's rule is set in stone. After all, the You star did engage in some hot and heavy behavior onscreen during the fifth and final season of his Netflix series.
"I had to throw that out the window," Badgley admitted in an interview with People last year. "And as I always said, I said, my desire is that least as possible, but if it's necessary, that's the show we all sign up to make. So, let's make sure it's vital, let's make sure it's important, it's deliberate. And we did."
So, what is it actually like to film a sex scene? Keep reading to see what other celebs have to say.
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Jennifer Lawrence
When it comes to onscreen nudity, the Silver Linings Playbook actress has found that her mindset has shifted over the years. Indeed, when she filmed her first nude scene in 2018’s Red Sparrow, Lawrence was initially very uncomfortable with the experience.
“Red Sparrow really scared the hell out of me because I get nude,” she told Vanity Fair at the time. “I tried to do the movie without nudity but realized it just wouldn’t be right to put the character through something that I, myself, am not willing to go through.”
But when it came time to film sex scenes opposite Robert Pattinson in 2025’s Die My Love, she was “not sensitive” about baring it all.
"I don't care about nudity,” she shared during a screening of the film. "I wanted [director] Lynne [Ramsay] to have total freedom artistically."
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John Cena
The wrestler-turned-actor shared a behind-the-scenes look into his sex scene with Amy Schumer in 2015's Trainwreck.
"There is nothing intimate about it," he said on an episode of Club Shay Shay in August 2024. "Nothing. So, like, it's really embarrassing."
Luckily, Cena had a very understanding costar.
"Amy is an angel," he continued. "She made the environment so comfortable, and then when I got the part, eventually they were like, 'Yeah, it's a sex scene and we want you to do elaborate and crazy stunt sex, and all those lines you had? We're probably not going to use them, we're just going to do this stunt sex scene.'"
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Jessica Alba
The Fantastic Four alum recalled feeling incredibly uncomfortable when she filmed a scene in the 2005 movie in which her character Sue Storm appeared naked over a bridge.
“I thought that was awful,” Alba shared in 2025. “It was very humiliating in real life."
She added, "I grew up with a pretty conservative family, and I am a pretty modest person. I dreaded that scene for weeks. I have a lot of whiplash from those days.”
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George Clooney
While the Ocean’s Eleven star had his fair share of movie romances, Clooney revealed that after a conversation with wife Amal Clooney he was no longer interested in kissing women on screen.
“I’ve been trying to go the route Paul Newman did. ‘OK, well, I'm not kissing a girl any more,’” he told the Daily Mail in 2025. “When I turned 60, I had a conversation with my wife. I said, ‘Look, I can still play basketball with the boys. I play with 25-year-old guys.’”
“‘I can still hang, I'm in shape,’” he added. “’But in 25 years, I'm 85 years old. It doesn't matter how many granola bars you eat, that's a real number.’”
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Kate Winslet
The Titanic actress has never shied away when it comes to sharing just how strange shooting sex scenes can be.
“Those scenes are really awkward,” Winslet told E! News in 2017. “It doesn't matter which way you look at it.”
Still, after having filmed many of them over the years, she felt as though she’s become a bit of a pro as she imitated herself on set, “‘Ok, everyone, this is how it's going to be.’”
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Phoebe Dynevor
While Bridgerton is known for its steamy love scenes, according to the show's star, there’s nothing truly sexy about filming the scenes, especially as they utilized an intimacy coordinator.
"It really was like shooting a stunt, it looked real, but we've got padding on," Dynevor told Harper’s Bazaar in 2021. "The angles are very … I mean, I've shot intimacy scenes before in the past without any of that. And I can't believe really how new this all is, because it just changed the game.”
The Fair Play alum added that she and costar Regé-Jean Page “felt super safe” after rehearsals, noting that once they got to set, “We already knew exactly what we're doing. We'd blocked it all so specifically. I knew exactly where his hand was going to go at what point. So it just meant that there wasn't any room for a director to go, ‘Oh, I want to see this now.’”
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Michael Sheen
The Masters of Sex star had a similar approach when it came to sex scenes with co-star Lizzy Caplan.
“Often when it comes to sex scenes, it can be gray area, people feel uncomfortable talking about it directly,” Sheen shared with The Wrap in 2015. “Early on, we were very clear that there couldn’t be any gray areas, that we were going to be doing that so much that everything had to be talked through beforehand.”
He and his costar essentially put together a “checklist” to make sure that nothing was left undiscussed before the day of filming.
“You make sure everyone on paper is clear what will be happening physically—what you’ll be wearing. You talk it through with wardrobe, hair and makeup so on the day nothing is a surprise,” Sheen continued. “And when we shoot, it’s an absolutely closed set. There’s someone ready to give you something to put on immediately as soon as they yell, ‘Cut.’ No one is allowed to wander past the monitors.”
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Penn Badgley
While the You actor was well aware that the show was predicated on him filming a number of more intimate scenes, Badgley admitted that he asked the show’s creator Sera Gamble if he could cut down on the number he was doing.
“This was actually a decision I had made before I took the show,” Penn shared on the Podcrushed podcast in 2023. “I don't think I've ever mentioned it publicly, but one of the main things is, ‘Do I want to put myself back on a career path where I'm always [the] romantic lead?’”
The decision was also tied to his relationship with wife Domino Kirke, with Penn adding, "Fidelity in every relationship—especially in a marriage—is important to me."
"It got to a point where I don't want to do that,” he continued. “So I said to Sera, like, 'My desire would be zero, to go from 100 to zero.’”
Ryan Emberley/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
Kirsten Dunst
The Oscar nominee has never been a fan of filming sex scenes, telling E! News in 2017, “I don't like it. To be honest, I'm like, 'Let's get this over with as fast as possible.'"
In fact, one of the reasons Dunst—who is married to Jesse Plemons—has found she prefers working with female directors like Sofia Coppola stems from her experience working with male directors who want “to shoot it from every angle.”
Dunst explained, “At least Sofia's like, 'We're going to get this done quick, we're just gonna shoot it here, we'll do three takes, be done.'"
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Dakota Johnson
The Fifty Shades of Grey alum has admitted to being surprisingly comfortable filming sex scenes, joking that she never has to mentally prepare for them.
“I’m, like, always psyched up for sex,” Johnson shared on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast in 2025, explaining how she approaches them from her character’s point of view. “First, it depends on who the character is and who the character’s supposed to be to the audience.”
“Is she like a super idolized hot girl? Is she a housewife? Is she lonely? Is she scared? Is she conservative?” she mused. “So that’s obviously character work.”
And it helped that her mom Melanie Griffith raised Johnson to “be really proud of my body and love my body.”
“I’ve always felt so grateful for that,” she added, “especially in my work because I can use it and it feels real.”
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