Warning: The Witcher Season 1 Spoilers Ahead
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Body doubles have been used in film and TV ever since nude scenes and dangerous stunts became a thing in moving pictures. Whenever actors are either not capable of or comfortable doing certain scenes, the body double steps in. Such scenes can range from life-threatening stunts to intense erotic scenes which demand nudity.
Apparently, that was not the case with Anya Chalotra on the set of the Netflix fantasy series 'The Witcher'. Chalotra, who plays Yennefer in the show, refused to let body doubles do her sex scenes in the show.
Anya Chalotra found using the idea of a body double uncomfortable
Chalotra plays the main female lead in the show called Yennefer of Vengerberg, who is a powerful sorceress and Geralt's (main character) love interest. In an interview with Metro, the British-Indian actress revealed that although she was offered a body double for nude scenes, she did not find it easy to hand over the character of Yennefer to any one else.
"I had a body double for the sex scenes, and she was always there. Flora," Chalotra told Metro, "But I didn’t, I only used her for the first sex scene because I realised very quickly in that first sex scene that actually, I didn’t feel comfortable [with] anyone else portraying Yennefer, because it’s still acting, isn’t it?"
Nude scenes cut off from 'The Witcher'
Following Chalotra's decision to not use the body double, the script was altered marginally to limit her nude scenes. To make sure Chalotra was comfortable with whatever she was doing, after a discussion with the creators, there was a collective decision to do away with the non-essential nudity from many of the other sex scenes the actress was involved in while filming the show.
"I found [watching] that really hard, so if we were going to talk about the sex scenes then it would be how we were best going to film them, so that I was comfortable and you’d get... you’d still get what we needed for the story to move on," she shared about the interaction with the artists on the set. So besides the character's first sex scene before her transformation that involved nudity, all of the scenes have Chalotra playing the character, clothes on or off.
"We thought we could portray those scenes without any nudity. Semi-nude, but not like the first sex scene where I had to use my body double," she added. "The only things that I had to get nude for were the scenes, the transformation scene and other scenes which actually really did develop the story."
The Season 3 of Netflix's 'The Witcher' will be available for streaming on Netflix from June 29, 2023.
