David on the love scenes in Casanova with some great quotes!!
For a show the tabloids have billed as a “sizzling bonkfest”, there’s not much nudity in it, is there?
David Tennant, the BBC’s new Casanova, takes this as a complaint. “No,” he laughs, rubbing his palms in mock salaciousness, “but there’s lots of sex.”
While relieved that not too much of his whippet-thin body would be bared in the three-part drama, he fretted that a decorous approach to the sex might be dull without “a bit of bum now and again” — but now he is pleased they did it that way. “When you start looking at actresses’ tits, it becomes a different thing — this way, it’s fun.”
Like most actors, Tennant is regularly mortified by the prospect of explicit love scenes, but the action here happens under corsets, behind canopies, beneath skirts: a rompy, rather than erotic, affair. The worst bit, for him, was a flashback sequence of remembered encounters (the older, reminiscing Casanova is played by Peter O’Toole), including quickies with elderly ladies. One of them was at least 70, I tease him. “Yes, but all she did was rip off my shirt. It was, ‘ Hello, Cynthia, I’ll be under your skirt, okay?’ I felt sorry for them. It was easier for me. They were only there for the day to get orgasmic on cue.”
Taken from Lesley White's interview in the Sunday Times March 6, 2005